


And I Will

by ohjustdisarmalready



Series: And I 'verse [1]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Fantasy Racism, Gen, Murder Mystery, Sibling Love, Stolen Century era, Temporary Character Death, the intersection of necromancy and first aid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-21
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-20 13:44:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 41,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12434082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohjustdisarmalready/pseuds/ohjustdisarmalready
Summary: Cycle eleven isn't where it starts, but it's where it's brought to their attention. Those twins are pretty close, aren't they? It's hard to imagine one without the other.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There's some not great burns described, but not in detail, and some violence, but mostly this is a fun family murder mystery. I rolled dice for each crazy stunt, some notables are listed at the bottom. Fantasy racism in this isn't too much like irl racism, but it is definitely present. Feel free to ask if you want a more descriptive warning!
> 
> I don't know how to indicate it, but this will have two chapters and an epilogue.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It begins.

Cycle eleven.

Actually, later than one might have expected Lup’s first death to be, given her general demeanor and stringent moral code. Then again, given her brother, maybe eleven was still too early. Given a mortal perspective, any time was too early.

The crew of the Starblaster arrived on a new planet in style, prepared for a good cycle ahead of them. The locals were welcoming to the point of adoration, hailing the IPRE crew as heroes from legend come to earth as a part of their quest. They gave up the Light with no fuss, and offered any and all resources the crew could need freely. In exchange, the team was able to warn them seriously about the encroaching Hunger, and with a year to ready the plane, there were high hopes for its survival.

Magnus trained with the militia in the capital city, while Lup taught the royal wizards. The palace practically fell over itself to ensure their comfort, which was nice, if not a little creepy. Lucretia looked deeper into the local legends that apparently told their entire adventure in abstract terms, but it was difficult to get people to talk freely with a living legend. Davenport, a little spooked by the reverence, spent most of his time under disguise, participating in sailing races. Taako spent his time taking full advantage of his celebrity status, and Barry and Merle fit in well with the local necromancer population, surprisingly enough—there didn’t seem to be any worry about necromancy being evil like there was on most worlds, and this world was very big on using natural resources to power magic. There was ample curiosity on both sides as to what Pan-influenced plants would do when used as spell components.

Well, there was curiosity on the side of Barry and on the side of the local wizards. Merle was in it because people listened to him talk about plants endlessly without cringing. He was a dwarf of simple tastes.

On a typical day, Lup, Magnus, and Lucretia would head to the palace and split up just past the gates. Magnus would spend a satisfying few hours beating the guards into shape, grab some food, and go at it again. He didn’t know exactly what Lup and Lucretia did all day, but he’d run into one or the other of them getting food sometimes and they seemed to be having fun. They’d all three meet up at the gate in the afternoon and walk back through town the long way, exploring and meeting people, and get to the Starblaster where Taako would have supper hot and ready for them. Davenport required team dinner all together, so sooner or later Barry and Merle would drift in, and they’d trade stories and eat together like always.

They’d been on the run together for ten years, and it was nice to regroup at the end of the day. Taako would complain about math and Lup would harass him into repairing whatever piece of clothing she’d charred, Merle would try to convince Barry to help him teach locals about the virtues of a close relationship with your houseplants, Magnus would reenact his favorite moments of training that day, even Lucretia would put down her books for a minute and smile. Magnus hadn’t really been one to appreciate family dinners before, but he was glad for the chance to lay eyes on all of his crewmates before the end of the day.

He was looking forward to what Taako would make when he left training for that day. The guard was getting better each day, and he had high hopes that this world would survive the Hunger, but it was time for some food. He was kind of hoping for meatloaf.

When he got to the gate Lucretia and Lup weren’t there, but that wasn’t unusual. Magnus had to quit when the guard shift changed, but either of the girls could get onto a good train of thought and forget to come home for hours. He went to look for Lup first, since she was the one most likely to be on fire at any given moment.

When he arrived at the top of the huge wizarding tower, it was quieter than usual and smelled only faintly of smoke and ozone. He poked his head into the practice room and saw a few magi hunched over papers and quills, working by conjured lights quietly. One of them hurried over as soon as she saw him poke his head in.

“Good afternoon, sir, it’s an honor to have you visit. Is there anything we can do for you?” She seemed to be the one in charge of the operation, so Magnus smiled and backed out of the doorway.

“You don’t have to call me sir, Magnus is fine. I’m just here for Lup. She already leave for the day?”

The wizard looked surprised. “Lady Lup hasn’t been here today, s—Lord Magnus. We assumed something important must have come up on the way. Were you expecting her to be here?”

That…well, running off to solve someone’s problems and getting caught up did sound like Lup. Still, she should have said something to someone. “And she hasn’t been here all day?”

The head mage looked troubled now. “No, she hasn’t been here. Is she in the palace? Perhaps she went to the library with Lady Lucretia?”

Well, she hadn’t mentioned anything that morning, but…the girls were good friends, maybe she’d changed her mind once Magnus had already left them. He nodded. “I’ll check in with Lucretia. It’s probably nothing.”

And then he thought a bit.

“Just in case, could you…keep an eye out? I’ll come back with Lucretia and check in if we don’t find her there. It’s probably nothing, but…”

The mage nodded. “Of course. If you haven’t found Lady Lup by the time you return, we will be ready to search for her. The royal wizards are not known for our scrying magics, but we can certainly search on foot. I’ll prepare the others. Eli, Ariana! Could you come here for a moment?”

A scrawny, plain-looking human of indeterminate gender and a female gnome appeared in the doorway. “Yes, ma’am? Sir?”

“Would you please accompany Lord Magnus to the library? It seems that Lady Lup is missing. She may have gotten distracted with something else, but just in case.” The magi glanced nervously at each other and to Magnus, who tried to look rustically hospitable and not like he was half-expecting them to secretly be evil. Which he wasn’t. He didn’t even know why the thought had crossed his mind. Paranoia, probably.

The gnome took the lead even though Magnus knew the way himself, a gesture which tried for polite and landed firmly in ‘these people think you’re incompetent.’ He tried to think the best of it. She was at least walking quickly for a gnome, which meant he could walk at a normal pace and not run her down, but Magnus’s ‘this plane is secretly evil’ senses had already been tripped and he’d rather get to his crewmates as soon as possible.

Luckily, the library was only a few narrow corridors away from the wizards’ tower if you took the back ways. More luckily, Lucretia was just leaving as Magnus and his entourage got there. Less luckily, Lup wasn’t conveniently also there.

Lucretia hadn’t spent the last ten years with him for nothing, though. She knew as soon as he approached that something was up.

“Where’s Lup?” She asked, faux-casual and keeping a close eye on the mages.

“We were hoping she’d be with you,” Magnus responded. Lucretia gave him a worried look—she hadn’t seen Lup around.

The human wizard stepped forward before they could get their panic on. “We didn’t want to say anything earlier in case it’s nothing, and not to be rude, sir, ma’am, but…”

The gnome elbowed them in the thigh. “Eli!” She hissed.

A lead!

“Tell us everything, now. My friend is missing and if I find out you could have found her…” He rested his hand on his battleaxe and loomed. He rolled badly and Eli looked more sympathetic than intimidated. Lucretia cleared her throat and looked much more imposing than before, so she was probably giving them an air of badassery even if Magnus wasn’t.

Either way, Eli held their hands out placatingly and nodded to their companion. “Is it alright if Ariana goes to tell the mages to start looking? I’ll tell you what I think it might be, but if I’m right we should hurry and find her. Okay?”

Ariana protested, “No way, Lady Lup would never—” but Magnus overrode her.

“Go. You, tell us what’s going on here.”

Eli pulled on a strained smile. “Not here, this isn’t a conversation for…here, there’s rooms in the library, follow me.”

Magnus spared a last suspicious glare for Ariana as she left for the tower and followed Eli into the library. A quick conversation with the receptionist meant they had a study room as long as they needed it, and “anything else you need, please, let me know and I’ll get it for you right away.” Lucretia gave Magnus a calming look and a quick hand gesture—this was apparently standard behavior. It tracked well enough with everyone else on this plane so far, but with Lup missing everything seemed sinister.

In the study room—a luxurious space with plushy chairs and a fireplace next to a well-made table and desk—Eli gently shut the door and turned to face them, still moving slowly and clearly with their hands out.

“Look, I’m not trying to say anything bad about Lady Lup, first off. She’s a very powerful wizard and has the respect of everyone in the palace. We’re all just as shocked as you are about this. Okay?”

Well that wasn’t suspicious. Lucretia gave Magnus a significant look and sidled past Eli, while Magnus stepped forward, commanding their attention. “Just tell us what you know,” he said.

Eli nodded frantically. “I am! I will. I’m on your side with this. But just—oh, this is gonna sound bad, I guess I’ve just gotta—have you considered that she might have gone missing because she’s—well you don’t act like it but—Lady Lup is an _elf_ ,” they stressed.

Well. No, Magnus hadn’t considered that. He considered it. Then he decided that that was bull and stopped considering it. “Look, Lup isn’t like your, you know, flighty elf shit. No way did she just skip out on us. Try again.”

Lucretia did something with magic behind Eli and gave Magnus a quick thumbs up. He did his best not to react.

Eli protested. “No, that isn’t what I _meant_. I mean, yeah, stereotypes are bad and all but—but she’s an elf, sir. You have to be realistic. She might have—you know.”

“No, I don’t think I do know. Why don’t you spell it out for me?” Magnus growled. If this was just gonna be a case of fantasy racism, they were wasting time they could be using to search for Lup.

Eli wrung their hands and glanced around fretfully. They leaned in close. “ _Spell components_ ,” They hissed.

Which didn’t mean shit to Magnus, but judging by how Lucretia stiffened, it wasn’t great. “What do you mean?”

Eli shook their head. “I think—you—you come from another world, right? Where there are lots of elves, and they just, live with you, like gnomes or dwarves or whatever?”

Magnus tried hard to think of any elves he’d seen since arriving. There had to have been some, right? Somewhere? “Yeah, we do. Where are the elves here? Where would they take her?”

Eli wouldn’t meet his eyes. “It’s not so much a matter of…where they are. It’s more of a matter of _if_ they are. We don’t really…have a lot of elves.”

As they spoke, their appearance changed. A shimmering glamor dropped and in place of the scrawny human was a lithe, scarred half-elf with their ears cut down to almost-human shape. They were missing one entirely, and their face was a mass of scar tissue, like it’d just been peeled off and left to heal. Someone had made every effort to take away the elven grace and leave only injury behind.

“Who did this to you?” Magnus demanded. Are they going to do this to Lup?

Eli—if that was their real name?—laughed wryly. “My mother, to protect me. My best bet was to blend in as a human, so she made sure I’d pass okay even without any spells slots. That’s how my grandpa got caught, went into town and his disguise self fizzled out right in the square. Didn’t have a chance.”

“Your mother did that to you? What could—what do you do in this world? What’s so horrible it’s worth—all of that?” Magnus could barely imagine. He didn’t want to imagine. He needed to find Lup and Taako and make them each into blanket burritos and never let them leave the Starblaster again.

Eli looked sympathetically at him, but their scarred face distorted the look to be more horrifying than anything else. “Elves are magical creatures, sir. Even part of an elf can be used as a spell component and make a spell that much more powerful. An ear, a fingernail, blood, hair. And they live so long, once you have one…well. They…when my mother was born they were going to sell her, they already had one and they didn’t need a half-blood. But my grandfather and one of the wizards had fallen in love, and they saved her. The elves wouldn’t accept her, but she lived free long enough to have me and she set me up with all the disguises I could need. I haven’t been found out yet because I’m only a quarter elf, but a full-blooded elf wandering through the palace daily? We thought your reputation would be enough to keep anyone from trying anything, and Lady Lup is a fearsome wizard, but if she’s missing…”

Magnus looked at Lucretia, desperate for Eli to be lying. She looked grim.

“Where—where would they take her? Is it just any wizard? Do we check the tower first? How do we know we can trust you?” Even as he asked he knew that was too many questions to answer, but. Turning people into spell components? What kind of fucked up society was this?

“I actually—I have an idea of where they might be. I wasn’t lying when I said Lady Lup has the respect of everyone in the palace, I don’t think it was anyone here that did it. But my mother keeps me updated on the latest from the independent wizards in town and she showed me a new setup in a cave, she—”

“Show me.” Magnus demanded.

“Of course. We need to hurry.” Eli murmured, reapplying their glamour and hurrying out of the study room.

Lucretia drew up close to Magnus. “They aren’t lying. I didn’t look too deeply, but their thoughts all aligned with what they’re saying. We need to tell Taako before he comes looking for us.”

Gods, Taako. He’d been buying groceries today, right? Or was that a plan for the future? Was he in town already, or had he been, or would he come to the palace if they were late? But Lup was already missing, already in danger. Taako could wait just a bit until they could come back with Lup in one piece. If they told him his sister was missing…Taako could be unpredictable at the best of times; he’d pull something crazy to find her. No, Taako shouldn’t be involved just yet, not if there was a chance that they could just find Lup and head home. Magnus followed Eli.

It didn’t take long to get out of the palace through a couple of shortcuts, and then it was a quick walk to the base of the mountain the city was built under and a cave that Magnus couldn’t see into. He fleetingly worried about being led into a trap, but even if it was an ambush at least they’d know where the bad guys were. Lucretia, wand out, cast a quick spell on him and nodded. Ready.

And then it didn’t matter if they were ready as flames roared out of the cave, breaking through the shadows and reaching towards Magnus. He did a sick flip and avoided getting burned, but now the silence was broken and they could all hear the sounds of battle inside. Magnus rushed in.

* * *

 

Lup was not having her best day. She was not having her second best day, or her third best day, or actually anywhere in the top hundred. Thousand, even. How many days had she been alive? It had to be in the tens of thousands somewhere. This day would definitely make the bottom half.

She could barely believe she’d gotten fuckin’ kidnapped. And by a bunch of necromancers! Or something? They had a good variety of magic, but typically the kidnapping of sentient beings was a necromancer thing. She tried for a moment to imagine Barry kidnapping someone. Would he have denim, like, people cages?

Someone had hit her head pretty hard.

Still, they were a bunch of dumbasses who’d only taken one of her wands, so she could slide her only-sort-of-hidden wand out of her boot and burn up the rope on her hands with a cantrip. The necromancers must have rolled real bad on their perception checks, because she wasn’t being super subtle about setting her hands on fire, but they were arguing about some shit she didn’t want to listen to and she managed.

It didn’t matter what they decided to do with her. She needed to get out of here before Taako figured out she was in trouble or he’d sneak in to try to rescue her and things would get sticky. Her brother could be a dramatic little shit when he was worried.

Well. Not that she could blame him.

Lup didn’t bother to burn a spell slot on the cage she was kept in, the lock was rusted and the cage was old as shit. It might have been sturdy a decade ago, but it wasn’t holding shit now. She gathered herself and kicked out the weakest-looking bar. It gave a little bit, but made a noise that alerted the dumbasses. She kicked again. Ineffective. Fuck it, she did burn a spell slot casting knock and diving out of the open door, getting glanced by a lightning bolt that some fast-thinking necromancer had fired. They were immediately restrained by the one standing next to them, hissing something about damage.

Another necromancer approached with hands held out, starting to speak, but Lup cast the biggest fireball she was capable of. Broil, fuckers. She stopped to catch her breath and surveyed her surroundings—they hadn’t loved that, but no one had gone down yet.

A necromancer (?) pointed at her feet and before she could dodge plants were sprouting up thickly around her, providing some cover but keeping her from dashing out. Another mage yelled something and she was surrounded in an opaque bubble, but there was a familiar roar—Magnus!—and the bubble popped again, depositing her behind a shrub. A new shape formed around her, a shield this time, and she saw Lucretia beckon her before the shield was shattered by another bolt of lightning.

She sprinted to her teammates’ sides—Taako wasn’t immediately obvious, but no way would he let a rescue happen without him, so he had to be around somewhere—and threw a flaming sphere behind her. It flickered as she struggled to concentrate enough for the spell, but held fast after a moment and rammed straight into the impromptu forest.

Lucretia called, “Magnus, I’ve got her!” and Magnus emerged from the smoke and the fray, a little worse for wear but in one piece.

“Gotta go gotta go gotta go!” He said, shepherding her and Lucretia towards the mouth of the cave. Just before emerging, Lup turned around for a moment—she still didn’t see Taako.

“Where is he? We can’t leave Ta—”

And then she didn’t say anything else, barely aware of the sickening gurgle that came from her throat when it was pierced by the luckiest fucking arrow.

And then she wasn’t aware of anything.

And then, for the first time in a long journey, Lup was dead.

* * *

 

When Barry remembered to emerge from the lab—he’d almost made a breakthrough on the light, he was sure of it, so no going into town today—the Starblaster smelled comfortably of breakfast. There was definitely bacon going on, maybe muffins? He was hoping for muffins. It was a little early for supper still, or he’d lost more time in the lab than he’d thought, but as he rounded the corner into the kitchen he saw Taako flipping pancakes like a pro.

“What’s up, home dawg?” Taako said, without turning around, because he was a creep who could tell when people were behind him without looking.

“Hey, Barry,” greeted Davenport, sitting on a tall stool near the counter, presumably helping. He had a small hoard of bananas he was going to town on with a kitchen knife, intermittently doing tricks with them.

“Afternoon, Taako, Cap’n. Pancakes tonight?” He asked, washing his hands in the sink.

“Yup. Hey, actually, maybe you’ll know something about this, too. I was just telling Cap-port ‘bout a guy I met today. You seen any elves in this world?” Taako flipped a pancake towards Davenport’s tossed banana chunks, but missed, and Davenport barely managed to catch the half-cooked mass on his knife and another banana.

“Dunk. Try again?” Taako muttered offhandedly, and Davenport slid the pancake back onto the frying pan.

Taako was a great guy to be around, pushed Barry to spend time with Lup more often, always had a quick remark to say, but he was not the best at taking things seriously. Barry’s brows furrowed.

“I mean, I haven’t talked to too many people…I guess I thought—I mean, no offense, I thought the elves just lived somewhere else. What, is something wrong with the elves on this world?”

Davenport leaned to allow Barry space to dip in and take the plate of finished pancakes, and a simple prestidigitation kept them warm as he put them on the table.

Davenport nodded as Barry turned back around to grab plates, and said, “That’s what I’d thought, or maybe elves just didn’t evolve or something, but Taako says he met one today.”

Taako shrugged fluidly, flipping his pancakes without disaster and waving his hand dismissively. “Yeah, real paranoid whack-job. All ‘come with me, I have candy, you should live with your people’ and shit. Like, if I lived with my ‘people,’ I wouldn’t be here now.”

There was a moment of silence and Barry thought about their home, and where their people probably were now. It became more obvious, sometimes, that Taako was…not _uncaring_ , per se, but less broken up about the loss of their home world than he could have been. Taako glanced at Davenport’s solemn face, and then at Barry’s, and said, “Shit. Not in uh, I didn’t mean—sorry. That was dumb of me. Anyway, this guy was all about elf purity or something, you know the type, wanted me to come join his elf clan in the forest or whatever. Said living with other races was dangerous, elves are the one pure force of magic in this world, that kind of thing. I told him he was full of shit and kicked his ass, no prob, but if you were wondering where all the elves went, apparently they’re out there.”

Taako’s ears, though less expressive than other elves’, were dipped back in apology, and he handed Barry a cup of chocolate chips. Davenport got an apple, which he accepted wordlessly and bit into. The twins may not have had too many attachments in their home world, but they respected their teammates’ grief. Barry paused his plate quest to put a hand on Taako’s shoulder—all is forgiven.

“Huh. I guess that makes sense? I can ask around next time I get to town, but that’s not too different from the citadels a couple years ago, right?” He brushed by Davenport to continue setting the table, and the captain gulped down his bite of apple.

“Probably nothing to worry about if they’re not violent. We’ll keep an eye on it. Taako, was the guy threatening at all?” He started a respectable toss-and-cut motion with the bananas again.

“Eh, he was nothing to worry about. Looked like he was coming back from grabbing some supplies in town, he wasn’t really interested in sticking around and fighting. He really wanted me to come with him, but he wasn’t so good at the whole ‘come with me’ shtick. Long as we keep an eye out, we’ll be fine.” Barry heard a whooshing sound as another pancake stunt was attempted, and a splat as a half-cooked pancake landed on something that was not a pan.

He turned around and Taako and Davenport were just sort of looking at each other, startled, while pancake and banana chunks slid down Taako’s face and onto his shoulder.

“Ho damn, that’s uh, that’s warm. Whew.” A quick spell cleared up the pancake, but Taako’s skin was a little pinker than it had been before. Barry set down his last plate and hurried over.

“That doesn’t look too good, Taako. Want me to go get Merle? Or I can watch the pancakes while you get some ice?” He leaned in to get a closer look, but Taako waved him off before he could get close.

“Like hell am I leaving you with these pancakes, man. I’ve seen what you do to pasta. How about you get some ice and I’ll get these bad boys done.” He pushed Barry’s chest until he’d backed up outside of Taako’s personal bubble, and turned back to his cooking. Barry grabbed a glass of water for him.

Davenport rolled his eyes. “Barry, go ahead and get Merle, he’s just working on his plants anyway. Taako, I’ll watch the pancakes, you—Taako? Hey, Taako.”

He waved a hand between Taako and the pan, but Taako didn’t move, clutching the pan handle and staring. Barry stopped heading moving, put a hand on Taako’s shoulder.

“Taako? Buddy? You, uh, you in there?”

At the touch, Taako whipped around, narrowly missing Barry and grazing Davenport with the pan. He dropped it on the floor, staring at and past Barry.

“Lup,” he said.

Fuck. What the hell. Taako stumbled forward a step and didn’t seem to notice his bare foot on the sizzling pan. Barry pushed him away from it and he didn’t react. Davenport leaped down from his stool to inspect the damage, but Taako lurched away.

“I don’t—you can’t—I’m not done yet, don’t fucking pull me, _Lup_ —”

His eyes focused for half a second and he grabbed the glass in Barry’s hand, holding hands awkwardly while he drew one of the half-dozen wands the twins kept on them at all times. “Barry—”

He got partway through an incantation, staring at Barry with desperate, frantic eyes, and Barry could swear time stopped for a moment. There was just him, holding on to his friend as Taako begged wordlessly for something, and the feeling of something raw and powerful and unfinished. They were suspended for an endless moment in the process of _something_ , moving through a transaction that should not be left unfinished, and then.

And then they weren’t, and Taako collapsed in Barry’s arms. Barry caught him, but he wasn’t— “Taako, Taako! Taako, buddy, look at me, yeah, just look at—Taako? Davenport he’s not breathing, Taako! Taako!”

Davenport got a finger on Taako’s pulse point as Barry slid towards the floor, and they both held frantically still for a moment. Davenport adjusted his position. Barry stared. Davenport slapped him.

“Look at me, Barry. Pay attention. Do you know CPR?” Barry nodded. For some reason, he was forgetting what you were supposed to do for cardiac arrest. Magic first, then shock? CPR first? How long were you supposed to feel for a pulse?

“Barry! I’m getting Merle, I need you to do chest compressions. 120 per minute for an elf.” Barry placed his arms on Taako’s chest, a mirror to where Taako’s had been on his own not two minutes. Now Taako’s hands were crumpled at his sides. He started compressions. 120 per minute. Davenport left the kitchen.

Some amount of time later, Barry’s arms were beyond sore and Merle thundered in. Thirty-one-two-three and he was being brushed aside for the light of divine magic. He tried to think of something he could cast to help, but the glass he’d been holding was rolling on the floor and you weren’t supposed to get cardiac patients wet? Wasn’t that a rule? Davenport slapped him again.

“Barry! Focus. Did you see anything? Are we being attacked?” Barry blinked and focused. Right. People don’t just—people don’t fall over and stop breathing. He tried to think.

“Taako was—trying to cast a spell? He wasn’t looking at me, and then he saw me, and then he just. I didn’t see anyone else? Did you? Was it some kind of attack?” No, there hadn’t been any foreign magic around. What would that be? There were a couple things he could think of, some serious fucking necromancy, but Taako’s spell had sounded familiar, too—a counterattack or defense or something else entirely?

Merle turned to face them. “No good. He’s gone.”

And then, for the first time in a long journey, Taako was dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Barry was defs gonna drop Taako, but he rolled a nat 20 to catch him. Taako wasn't gonna burn himself with a pancake, but he critically failed to flip it. Mags and Lup had some pretty bad rolls, it wasn't really their day. Lucretia didn't have to roll for half of her stuff because she's a badass and her fate is too powerful to be determined by dice.
> 
> Also, if you look back at the cave of elf traffickers, there are some ranger spells used, which is why they had people who shoot arrows. If anyone is gonna use people as spell components, rangers and warlocks are a good place to check.
> 
> If you have any questions, goodness knows I love to talk. Hit me up!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The plot thickens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I figured out how to mark it as multi-chapter! Heck yeah. This chapter only got through about half of its content before it started getting too long, so I split it. There is some description of dead bodies here, so beware!
> 
> Lucretia comes off a little cold in this chapter--it isn't that she doesn't care, but I think she would compartmentalize real hard in this kind of joint.

Fuck.

Even knowing she was gonna come back…fuck. They hadn’t lost either twin yet, and now, fuck. Maybe it was because Lup had been _right there_ when it happened, maybe it was that she’d been midway through a word—fuck.

But there wasn’t time for regret. Already Magnus was picking Lup up and they had to go before one casualty became three. Lucretia hadn’t died yet either, and she wasn’t about to start. She blindly cast a barrier over the cave entrance and followed Magnus. Eli was already in the woods and they ran.

Lucretia wasn’t the beefiest wizard in the world, but she could manage a good run for her life if she needed to. Still, they would never have gotten out if not for Eli’s knowledge of the woods. They ran through clearings, over hills, around brambles and soon they were past the city, beginning to edge towards the path to the Starblaster. Eli slowed, finally, and Magnus skidded to a halt, cradling Lup in his arms and breathing heavily.

“Here’s where I have to go,” said Eli. “They shouldn’t be following us anymore, and I have to get back to the palace and tell them what happened. Can you get home from here?”

Magnus didn’t seem to be in a state to answer, and Lucretia wanted to start crying with him, but. Someone had to take care of the people still alive. She pushed down the feelings grasping at her and squared her shoulders, trying to be brave and commanding like Lup.

“We can get back. Go.” She fell a little short of Lup’s confidence, her ease in decision-making, but Eli looked like they understood. They reached out, faltered, and dropped their hand back to their side.

They glanced fretfully at Magnus, hunched over Lup’s body like it would do anything, and said, “If it’s any consolation, um. I’m sorry we couldn’t save her. She was…I wish we could have. But, if it makes you feel better, at least she…at least it was quick. She didn’t—”

Magnus snapped his head up to glare, and Eli quickly held their hands up in surrender. “I’m going. I’m sorry. If there’s anything—well, you probably won’t want anything from me. But you know where to find me.”

And then they were gone, jogging to the outskirts of the city they’d been skirting the edges of. Lucretia watched them go.

“Taako’s not gonna be happy.” Magnus said.

Lucretia turned back to him. She shook her head. She didn’t want to think about what that would be, one twin without the other for another whole month. She didn’t want to think about anything. She started walking towards the path to the ship. She heard Magnus come to his feet and follow her. She didn’t hear him set Lup down, and a part of her was glad. She wasn’t ready yet. Lup would hate to be laid to rest with an arrow sticking out of her throat in the middle of the woods. Taako would want to see his sister. Those people could still be out there. They needed to keep her.

It was an exhausting, stumbling walk to the Starblaster. They’d already covered most of the distance, but Lucretia just couldn’t scrape up the energy to hurry. She didn’t want to get there. But in the end, it didn’t matter, because a figure came sprinting down the path and resolved into Merle.

“Magnus, Lucre—oh, gods. Oh, Pan, no.” He slowed as he approached, and stopped completely once he saw Lup. “Is she…?”

Magnus clutched Lup’s body closer and it fell to Lucretia to nod. She couldn’t get the words to form. Merle got the message and put a hand to her elbow, bringing her in to a huddle with Magnus. Not quite a group hug because Merle was too short and Magnus wasn’t moving and Lucretia couldn’t unwrap her arms from around herself, but close. They stood together for half a moment, but Lucretia had to move or she’d break down. She reached one hand without uncrossing her arms to touch Magnus’s, on Lup’s shoulder, and gently tugged him forward. He went, and they continued walking.

Merle’s voice broke the quiet. “This isn’t a good time, but you’re not gonna want a surprise. Taako’s gone.”

Magnus lurched and Lucretia could barely fought off the urge to just sit down in the dusty road. She couldn’t take it, she couldn’t go to another cave and be just a little too slow to save her family. She wouldn’t survive it.

“Do we know where?” Magnus rumbled, his voice scraping out of his throat like a sword on a sharpening stone, sparking and growling and grating. Merle hurriedly shook his head.

“No, not like missing. He was making supper and as near as we can tell, it was some kind of necrotic attack. He started acting funny and then collapsed. Barry’s looking into it, but whatever it was it was pretty damn powerful. Davenport sent me to get you and get back to the ship, we don’t know who we can trust.” He kept a hand on each of them, like he was afraid they’d stop if he didn’t keep them going. Maybe they would.

No, she couldn’t think like that. Their dear friends had been killed and wallowing would help no one. She needed to be strong—and actually, thinking about it like that, Lucretia found it almost easy to shrug off the grief. Rage, stronger and fiercer than the shock, took its place. This plane had promised them anything they needed and it had taken Lup and Taako from them. Fiery, beautiful Lup had been made into the limp corpse Magnus was carrying around for fucking spell components. Witty, guarded Taako had been killed in his own home, the one place he’d begun to let his guard down. Somewhere, someone had hurt her crew and Lucretia wasn’t going to allow that. She was going to protect her family and she was going to ensure that Taako and Lup had a home to come back to next year. Someone out there was going to pay for this.

As she worked herself out of the paralysis of grief, she began walking faster, until Merle had to almost jog to keep up with her. Magnus adjusted his pace to match her, still lost in Lup’s death. She looked down.

“What do we know about who killed Taako? How long ago was this?”

Merle frowned at her like he didn’t like where she was going with this, but Lucretia would do what needed to be done. She stared him down.

He sighed and broke eye contact. “You’ll hear all this as soon as we get back, Dav and Barry were the only ones in the room. I only got there after. What we know is that it wasn’t natural. When I looked him over…’Cretia that wasn’t death that hit him. That was beyond death. Complete separation of soul and body. Barry could try to raise the corpse as a thrall, but I don’t think even that would work. No energy approaching life is getting near that body. It’s, uh. Pretty horrifying.”

Magnus made a choked sob, but they needed information if they were going to continue. Lucretia itched for a notebook. She wished she hadn’t left hers at the palace in her hurry. She wished she’d left a bit sooner and gotten Lup out safely. She wished she’d been in the Starblaster to shield Taako from whatever had hurt him. She wished she had someone to stop so she could ensure the rest of her team’s safety.

Merle was patting Magnus on the hip and trying to get him to let go of Lup when the Starblaster came into sight. Lucretia wasted no time getting in and heading to the cockpit—the meeting room had been turned into a rec room, serious meetings would happen where they could see what was going on outside and get away if they needed to. When she got there, Captain Davenport was waiting, grim and watching the viewscreens. Magnus and Merle were still outside, talking. Merle had his arms outstretched and Magnus was clutching Lup to his chest, turning away.

“Lup was killed.” Lucretia said.

Captain Davenport didn’t look surprised, but he sighed and took a moment to slump. Then he straightened and looked her in the eye. “I’m gonna need a report on how that happened, but it can wait until everyone is in the same room. Barry’s in the lab, I’ll get him and we can get started as soon as Magnus and Merle get in.”

Lucretia nodded, but she followed him into the lab. There would be notebooks there, she told herself. _If anyone attacks Davenport I can protect him._

The lab was one of the few common areas on the ship with a door, but it slid open with no fuss. Taako was lying on the table, barefoot and burned on one foot. His eyes were closed and he wasn’t moving. Barry startled when Captain Davenport approached.

“Anything?” The captain asked.

“Yeah, there’s…I don’t think this is Taako, Captain. Like, this body, it isn’t…real.” He polished his glasses nervously as he spoke, and Lucretia only got more determined. If Taako was still out there somewhere, they would get him back.

Davenport nodded and furrowed his brow, but Lucretia needed more. “Who created it? How and when was the switch performed? How can you be sure?”

She grabbed one of the many blank notebooks on the ‘blank notebooks’ shelf. Lup was always losing hers, and Taako would switch his out with Barry’s when he was bored.

Barry looked up, startled. He put his glasses back on. “Oh, hi, Lucretia. I’m glad you’re home safe. I’m, I’m not really sure when exactly, but I can be pretty confident it was only just before. Taako was trying to cast the spell magic jar, so I think he knew something was happening? Transmutation is his school, so any kind of teleportation or switching spell might fall under his domain. And if he’d cast magic jar in time, he could just possess the new body, no harm done. Well, he couldn’t, because this body is really not meant to be inhabited, but not knowing the body that was coming specifically, it was a good idea. I’ll need some help on a ritual to try to track where the body is from, but even if Taako doesn’t manage to get himself out of this, we should be able to find whoever took him soon.”

“You still think it was the elves?” Davenport asked.

“Elves?” Lucretia asked. As in elf trafficking or were there other elves around?

Davenport nodded. “Taako had had an encounter with an elf earlier, said the elf really wanted him to come with him. He didn’t think it was going to be a problem, but we may have underestimated this.”

“The people who—they killed Lup for being an elf,” said Magnus, appearing in the door. He’d been convinced to set the corpse down, apparently, but he was covered in blood and his eyes were still red.

“Lup’s dead?” Barry asked, horrified. Right. No one had told him.

“This world has some pretty heavy superstition about elves. They think.” Lucretia hadn’t been prepared to be the one to explain this. “They think…you know that old wives’ tale about elf ears? And…if you use them in a potion, or a spell?”

Davenport looked grim and Barry paled. Merle wilted but didn’t look surprised. “If you add an elf ear, your spell gets more powerful, yeah. Never applied to me ‘cause Pan, you know, frowns on that kind of stuff, since elves are his…anyway. Yeah. I know a couple versions.”

Lucretia shook just having to say it, but the crew needed to know. “These— _people_ —think—well, they took Lup. And Magnus and I found out she was missing and we found where they took her and we got her out, but they got a lucky shot. It was about an hour ago. We got out with her body and came straight here.”

She turned to pace a few steps away, needing to move. This space wasn’t meant to house five and a body. She turned back. “We need to find those people. If they took Lup, they might have taken Taako.”

Magnus hummed his agreement, scowling darkly. Davenport objected. “We can’t afford to lose anyone else here. Whatever we do, we need to play it safe. We’ll get Taako back, but we don’t even know where he is right now. We need to figure out who made the decoy.”

Magnus slumped with relief. “Taako’s alive?” He looked at Merle.

Merle shrugged, and muttered back, “News to me.”

Barry straightened. “Yeah, maybe. It’s hard to say. He said some funny things before, you know, and he tried to cast a spell that would help if they were moving his physical body and he didn’t want his soul to come with. I’ve been keeping an eye on the body and it doesn’t act like a living being’s physical component should. It’s—you see this?”

Barry made a quick gesture with his wand and suddenly something like steam or maybe bubbles was rising out of the body on the table. White, glowing energy, hissing off in bits and waves.

“This is energy. The whole body is turning into energy, pretty quickly—I’d give us three days before it evaporates completely. It must have been a pretty hasty repurposing, because this body is a lot more like a conjured servant than anything else. My best guess is it’s a really high-level casting of unseen servant with some modifications, but it could really be any spell that creates a body. Hell, it could be a really big mage hand if the mage in charge of it is good enough at transfiguration.”

“And if someone transfigured a fake corpse for Lup, Taako would be on it in a second,” Merle said.

“Exactly. It may have been strategy or it may have been luck, but they took out our best source of transfiguration knowledge when we need him most. And also, there’s no evidence of his soul passing on to the astral plane. Normally death leaves an energy, kind of a path that you can trace between the body and where the soul has gone. I tried to find Taako’s to make sure he’d been killed and not trapped between death and magic jar or something, but it’s not there. Taako’s soul didn’t take a path out of this body, or if it did, it didn’t lead anywhere I can reach. That there wasn’t even a trail means it would have to go out of this planar system, and they don’t have the magic or the tech for that here.”

“So he’s not dead,” Magnus pressed.

“He didn’t die then, anyway. We don’t know who has him or what they want. The sooner we can find him, the better.” Barry replied.

“We can’t be careless, though. I know you want to run out there and find him, but you’ll do none of us good getting yourself killed too. From now on anyone leaving the ship does so in pairs and you stick with each other. Barry, Merle, you’ll be working on a locator ritual to find Taako and to find the creators of the fake. Lucretia, Magnus, you may try looking for the elves or asking your contacts in the city if they know anything, but _do not_ engage. If you have a _hint_ of an idea of where Taako is, you come right back here and wait for backup.” Davenport stared straight at Lucretia and she knew she was being given responsibility for keeping Magnus from getting them killed. She didn’t think it would be an issue, though—Magnus nodded grimly and crossed his arms. He was ready for the long haul with this.

“There are other elves on this plane, though?” He asked.

“Yeah, they wanted Taako to go with them—actually, Lucretia, we’d better get this all down in writing before we forget anything. If there’s anything I’m missing now, we’re gonna want to be able to look over what happened later.” And so the propeller noise that came by whenever they had to explain something they’d already done sounded and Lucretia got the whole story written down word for word in her notebook.

* * *

 

Over the next week, the team kept busy. Magnus was a little glad to be able to kill all those guys that had killed Lup, but it turned out she’d already burned most of their notes escaping and what was left didn’t bear thinking about. It did make Magnus wish desperately for Taako, who would make a dark joke or help distract them or be alive and free and safe with all parts attached, but Taako wasn’t there and they didn’t find anything useful in the cave. They really should have kept someone alive to interrogate, but. That didn’t happen.

Barry worked on some sciency stuff with the fake body and talked about conjuration endlessly, occasionally going into town to ask the non-royal magi about elves and spell components, but Magnus didn’t know too much about his progress either way, so it was a good bet that nothing had been found out yet. Merle asked the plants to show him the way to the elves, but apparently they lived very deep in the woods, or used some pretty powerful magic to prevent themselves from being tracked. Magnus and Lucretia checked in with the palace every day for news and Eli said that the elf clans in the woods were completely impossible to find unless they found you first.

Lacking any other leads, Magnus spent most of his time searching the woods for elves and roughing up citizens for information. Lucretia was trying to set up a trap that would allow any race but elves through, and taking careful notes of anyone who seemed suspicious in town. They’d gotten Eli to swear up and down that they’d report anything they heard and to try to find the elf clans themself, but nothing so far. They reconvened every evening for food—usually pasta because none of them had had to cook for over a decade now—and to keep updated. So far, updates had turned out to be ‘I can’t find him; here’s what I tried to do today.’

But tonight had some potential. Barry had stayed in the lab and he was looking pretty satisfied, he’d even gotten out in time to make a salad to go with Davenport’s somewhat singed lasagna. Maybe something had happened. Magnus leaned into Barry as he entered the kitchen.

“Stuff?”

Barry jumped a bit but did his best to hold both of them up. “Stuff. Help set the table, I think we might be able to do something tonight.”

So Magnus got drinks and the rest of the crew trickled in and sat together, two empty seats on the end of the row because leaving them in the middle felt too lonely. The lasagna was fine if you got the middle bits, and one of the magic folks would have to clean the pan after they were done, but they’d gotten spoiled over the past eleven years and Magnus ached for some of Lup’s lemon fish thing with the rosemary. The twins had joked about teaching him to cook, but now he wished he’d made the time for it. Next year.

Once everyone was settled and started eating, Barry cleared his throat. “I, uh, I have everything ready for a ritual to find Taako’s physical location on this plane and I’ve got everything I need for a tracking spell for the creators of the fake if that doesn’t work out. I was able to preserve the body with some modified necromancy, so we can use that, but to look for Taako I’ll need something of his—preferably part of his body, but that’s obviously off the menu, so something he interacted with a lot will do. That one’ll take all five of us to cast, but the tracer for the fake should only take three of us a little while. I was thinking we could cast tonight and set out tomorrow first thing? That way we can have some time to rest up and plan?”

Davenport nodded. “Sounds like a plan. We’ll be needing to get into the twins’ quarters, then?”

And wasn’t that a thought. Still, Taako would forgive them once he got back. Lup wouldn’t care once she knew it was for her brother. “I can go. Taako’s got a hairbrush he won’t let Lup use ‘cause she’s too rough on them—will that do?”

Barry smiled gratefully, and even Lucretia relaxed a bit. No one relished the idea of breaking into their dead companions’ quarters. Merle grunted, “I’ll go with you. Taako’s room is trapped to hell and back, those might be on the fritz if he’s too far out of range. Lup’s room is worse. You’ll want backup.”

Well fuck. And here Magnus was thinking the twins had relaxed a bit. Well, they’d been on the road longer than Magnus had been alive. Old habits die hard, and all.

“Sounds like a plan. Barry, will a hairbrush be close enough? Is contamination an issue?” Davenport clapped his hands together and Magnus stood.

“Yeah, should be okay, they’re twins so the genetic material is the same…they have remarkably similar magical signatures, I’m not sure the spell would differentiate even if we got the wrong one…yeah, that should be okay. Should I set up?” Magnus walked out to the fading sound of Barry fretting with Merle at his side. The wizards could figure out the wizard stuff.

Entering Taako’s quarters, Magnus didn’t immediately see anything too terrifying, except perhaps the precarious balance of open containers of makeup and nail polish on top of stacks of clothes and books that really went higher than physics would seem to allow. Which could be considered a form of trap in and of itself, but Magnus had really expected more…fire. Death. Maybe a dinosaur. He poked at the lights.

“Not a great sign,” Merle said, rooting through the pile closest to the door. Magnus joined him, but it was mostly clothes and some loose paper with what might be magic or might be doodles on them. Looked like Lup’s handiwork.

“What’s a bad sign?” He asked.

“Nah, not a bad sign, necessarily, yet. There should have been something activated by now—there. Whatever’s going on, Taako’s magic isn’t working over here like it should. Some kind of dampener, maybe? Or he needs it more where he is.” Merle muttered, unearthing a rune of some sort carved into the doorframe. He hit it with his bible and it sparked weakly, but even Magnus could tell it wasn’t Taako’s magic, and whatever Merle was channeling didn’t activate it in any way he could see.

Still. Optimism. “At least we don’t have to worry about traps, right? Taako’s probably kicking ass wherever they poofed him, we just need to get a brush and get over there.”

Merle nodded, bolstering. “Yeah. Taako’s a slippery bastard anyway, we’ll probably find him on his way back like we did you and Lucretia. Let’s get this done.”

Merle was rummaging through a vanity, so Magnus figures his next best bet was the bed. It was mostly a shelf for vaguely-organized knickknacks and hair clips, anyway, because elves and also because Taako slept in Lup’s room or the rec room. Sifting through hairbands and barrettes and bobby pins and, inexplicably, lockpicks, he didn’t see any stray hairs or any sort of hair brushing device, but there was a pile of (gross) nail clippings on a paper towel. He scooped it up.

“Got some, uh, nail clippings here. You find anything?” Merle was finished digging through the vanity, and he’d come out with a hand mirror.

“Yeah, that’s probably good. Let’s get to the lab with it.”

When they got to the lab, a tarp with an intricate sigil on it had been unfurled and covered the floor where the table usually was, and the table and body had been pushed to the side. They both glowed oddly with the magic keeping the body sustained, which wasn’t super comfortable to see on the form of a good friend, but that’s how it goes, Magnus supposed. Barry was fidgeting with some candles when they arrived, but got up readily when he saw them in the doorway.

“You got something? What is it?” He asked.

Magnus held out the paper towel. “Nail clippings? It’s kind of gross, but you said part of his body…?”

Barry took it from him and squinted at it. “You got this in Taako’s room?”

Magnus glanced at Merle for backup. “Yeah? Yes. Yes, we did. Are they not good?”

Barry was frowning, looking closely at the clippings. He tilted the paper towel. Poked them. Strode over to the table in the corner and put the towel down.

“Barry? Is something wrong?” Davenport asked, looking up from where he and Lucretia were conferring over a notebook.

Barry shook his head.

“Nothing, probably, just…let me try something…this is funny,” he sounded puzzled and waved his wand over the table, clippings and construct and all. The construct began letting off the same half-corporeal energy it had before as Barry’s stasis spell let off, but strangely enough, so did the paper towel.

“This shouldn’t be happening. These weren’t a part of the construct when it was brought here, there’s no reason for them to be evaporating like it does. They’re letting off energy—it’s slower, but they’re disappearing too. Why would…?” Barry trailed off into muttering, disappearing the spell that allowed them to see the evaporation and setting the stasis spell again.

“Will this prevent us from doing the ritual?” Magnus asked. He’d gotten pretty attached to the idea of knowing something at the end of the night.

Barry shrugged. “Well…no? I don’t—I don’t think anyone would have thought to give us fake nail clippings. That kind of precision casting, too—it would take something pretty damn powerful to put something in Taako’s room without ever having been there, and there just wouldn’t be a point to putting any random body parts around…no, yeah, I think we can do the ritual anyway, it’s just—well, it’s not a good sign. That parts of Taako’s existence are erasing themselves autonomously, that can’t really mean anything great.”

Yeah, it didn’t sound great. But it also didn’t sound like something Magnus could fix, and Taako being gone might be solvable if they found where he went. “What do you need from me?”

Barry shook himself and looked back at the room. “Right. Everyone, I’m gonna need you to sit at the points of the sigil—Merle, Magnus, make sure there’s someone between you two, and Magnus I’ll need you on the eastmost side to give you a little support on the magic end. We’re all gonna put our hands on the sigil like this and focus on Taako, like, as a concept. What he feels like, the kind of impression he makes, that kind of thing. Keep your mind open about what he might be doing now, and we should get one of a couple of things to point us in the right direction. Got it?”

Magnus had no idea which was the eastmost side, but everyone else picked a place and kneeled there, so he went in the space left over. There was a general nod of assent around the room.

“Okay, so this should be pretty quick. It’ll find the physical location of Taako’s body and report back to us. Start concentrating.” Barry set the paper towel in the center of the sigil and Magnus thought hard about Taako.

Elf. Brother. Arcanist. Prickly but kind in his own way. Stubborn, loving, selfish, passionate, fashionable. Singular, but clearly half of a larger personality. Lup’s shadow in dangerous situations and Magnus’s partner in crime when they had time to relax. He liked—

And Magnus’s train of thought was interrupted and the sigil lit up before being replaced by an image. In it Magnus could see himself, and Davenport and Merle and Barry and Lucretia, crouching in the corner. The focus of the image was tuned in on something else, though. The table in the corner, with the body on it. Magnus could see his friend’s face, same as it had been all week. Then the sigil was back and the spell fizzled out and he realized he’d stopped concentrating.

Barry cursed quietly.

“Did it not work? Or is that…?” Magnus didn’t want to finish, didn’t want to think they’d kept Taako’s corpse on a lab bench for a week, but. He got up, took a step towards the body.

“Yeah,” Barry said. “Looks like it.”

Magnus went to the table. Had Taako been dead the whole time, then? They’d looked for him but he’d just died that day, same as Lup?

“I think we need to talk about this, but first—Barry, just to be sure, can you bring out the ritual to find who made the body? We need to know for sure.” Davenport was already extinguishing candles and rolling up the tarp, and Magnus didn’t turn to see it, but Barry started shuffling through something.

He looked at the body on the table, trying to see…something. That this was Taako; that this wasn’t Taako. Magnus was no good at the magic stuff, but he should be able to recognize his friends, right? Merle appeared at his elbow, also staring. He cast something and started muttering to himself.

Magnus still hadn’t found anything he was looking for when a bright light shone behind him, moments before a magical force threw him forward over the table. Merle smacked his head right into the edge, and Magnus barely managed to hop over it in time to avoid some very painful bruising. The explosion was brief, but it left Magnus crouched over Taako’s (not Taako’s?) body on the lab bench.

He sprang off just as quickly as he’d gotten up, hurrying to where the crew’s remaining wizards were on their backs on the ground. Davenport was sitting up already, Barry looked dazed, and Lucretia seemed out of it. He crouched by her side. “What happened?”

Barry blinked and looked over to him. “That was not supposed to happen.”

Lucretia shrugged him off, apparently more deep in thought than hurt. Merle was making his way to Davenport’s side in a blatant show of favoritism, since Davenport was already back on his feet.

“Right. So that means that we can’t track who made the body, which probably means it is Taako’s body and the ritual couldn’t point us to our original plane?” Davenport asked.

Barry shrugged. “Or it could be that whoever made it has some protection against tracking spells, or, well, it could be a lot of things. We don’t have a handy location off it, though, no.”

“Right. Let’s clean up here and we can have a meeting to consolidate what we know, but then we’re going to sleep for the night. This mystery isn’t going anywhere, but if we aren’t well-rested we won’t be able to solve anything.” Davenport said. It seemed like a good idea, so Magnus started rolling the second ritual tarp up. Big intellectual problems weren’t his strong point, but he could straighten up a room well enough.

When the room was presentable and the papers disrupted by the failed ritual were put back into place, there weren’t really enough chairs for everyone and the table was still full, so they sat on the floor. No one really wanted to leave the room quite yet. Davenport cleared his throat.

“So, what we know right now. This plane has reason to kidnap or kill elves, and a group of magi killed Lup.” Magnus flinched at that—it was still fresh. “On the day all this happened, Taako met an elf, who tried to convince him to join a group of elves in the woods. We haven’t been able to find those elves since, because the elves of this world guard heavily against detection. The body we have is behaving strangely—Barry, can you elaborate on that?”

Barry nodded. “Right, so Taako’s body is being transformed into energy in a way that’s consistent with a magical construct no longer being animated. Parts of his body that weren’t attached at the time of the event are also affected by this, but more slowly. A ritual to find Taako’s physical location acknowledges the body we have as a legitimate one, meaning it’s a very good fake or it’s the real thing. However, the kind of necromancy you’d need to dissolve someone’s entire existence like that—well. I could do it, given infinite resources and maybe a year to plan, but it’s not something easy. It would have to be the result of a lot of planning or some extremely powerful entity. So either we have an incredible fake made by someone who really doesn’t want to be tracked or we have something that…well, if it’s mortal, it’s a pretty damn powerful one, and it decided to erase Taako’s existence in its entirety.”

Not a great start.

There was silence for a bit as—well, Magnus couldn’t speak for the others, but he was trying to think of how he could fight something immortal. Then Merle spoke.

“It wasn’t divine, whatever it was. I have a spell that lets me ask Pan a couple questions and I only get a yes or no but he said this plane’s gods weren’t involved in this. He also said the body we have was Taako’s, so if it’s a fake it’s gotta be powerful enough to fool a god. I don’t know about you lot, but I’ve never seen something like that before.” He combed his beard with his fingers as he spoke, not glancing up until he was done. Magnus nodded.

“I mean, I’m not magic, but if that was a copy it was a damn good one. His freckles were right, no one but Lup gets his freckles right.” He offered. It had been the end of many impression games on the Jell-O world when Magnus could get close enough and tell right off who wasn’t Lup or Taako.

Davenport nodded. “I know what you mean—I’m not actually sure Taako could make this good of a copy of himself. Lup could, for sure, maybe the rest of us if we had some time, but if this is a fake we’re facing something pretty damn powerful.”

It was then that Lucretia spoke up, looking up from her journal where she’d been writing minutes. “What I’ve got down is that Taako died almost exactly an hour before Magnus arrived back at the ship. Is that correct?”

Barry nodded, and Davenport said, “Near as I can tell.”

“And it took Magnus and I almost an hour to get back to the ship after Lup died. It sounds to me like they both died at or around the same time.” Lucretia continued. She turned a page in her journal and it made a crisp sound as she kept writing on the next page.

“Yeah, that sound accurate. What are you getting at, Lucretia?” Davenport leaned forward. Magnus leaned in, too—Lucretia didn’t usually speak up unless she had something important to say.

“Do you think it was the guys in the cave? They’re all dead, though,” he said.

“No,” Lucretia said, “I think it was Lup.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How did you like Lucretia's POV? She's got some stuff to say next chapter. Let me know what you think is going on, though, I'd love to hear your theories! As always, please talk to me!
> 
> Fun rolls this chapter: Magnus rolled real bad on his investigation every time, no criticals this chapter.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barry has something to say, and it is this:
> 
> What the actual hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's a short one, but it came to a natural ending and I didn't want to force it. We're gonna have a breakthrough next chapter, and then some Lup POV! She's got Opinions to Share, and she is my love and I love her.

“What the _fuck_ ,” Barry said.

Lucretia flinched. “No, I don’t think—I don’t think Lup meant for Taako to get hit when she died, but hear me out. Lup dies and a couple miles away her identical twin calls for her and collapses? Taako’s last words were strange already, but he was aware that something happened to Lup and he knew something was going to happen to him.”

“That is a hell of an accusation, Lucretia,” Barry released a breath. “That kind of soul binding would be incredibly detrimental to both of them. Not to mention pretty fucking ethically questionable. I know the twins are close, but…hell, Lucretia.”

“Look, I know it isn’t easy to think about, but it makes sense. I’ve been looking through some of my old journals and, think about it. Lup and Taako have never been apart for more than a day or two, certainly not more than ten or twenty miles. Do you remember when we were talking about unseen servant? And Lup freaked out about it?” Lucretia pressed. Barry could barely believe what he was hearing. Scratch that, there was no way he could believe this if Lucretia was implying what he thought she was implying.

“Hey, care to explain for the peanut gallery?” Merle asked, and Barry remembered their audience. Davenport seemed to be following, but Magnus looked utterly lost.

“Lucretia is accusing Lup and Taako of some pretty fucking messed up magic that would—well it would mean one dies when the other does, but it would also be fucking evil. The implications on free will alone…they wouldn’t be able to disagree with each other, they’d have to follow each other damn near everywhere, their magic would be off the charts unstable. That kind of magic would drive both of them insane. No way.” Barry explained, and then realized that that didn’t actually explain much and tried again. “She’s saying Lup and Taako linked their souls together, put part of their souls in one another. It’s some incredibly difficult magic, incredibly taboo. I know serious necromancers who would be scared of this kind of thing.”

Davenport looked at Lucretia. “Is this what you’re trying to say?”

Magnus looked like he wanted to interject, clenching and unclenching his fists, and Merle calmed him with a hand on his knee. Lucretia straightened. “Not precisely. I’m proposing that Taako is, in his entirety, a magical construct.”

“Now wait just a minute,” Magnus said, and Davenport let out a whistle.

“Bull _shit_ ,” Barry said. “No fucking way. Someone would have noticed before now, constructs are never permanent, Taako has _way_ too much personality to be a fabrication, that is impossible on so many levels.”

Not to mention Lup wouldn’t _fucking do that_. She refused to learn unseen servant, a basic level one spell that conjured a mindless entity to follow mental commands, because she hated the idea of a creature having to exist without free will. No fucking way would she create a magical construct to follow her around and be her brother. Not to mention that Taako was a _real fucking person_.

“When you asked Lup why she didn’t know unseen servant, she said she would never learn a conjuration spell. She said she didn’t want to create a sentient being that would be forced to bow to her will. And then Taako said she wouldn’t need to because she had him. I always thought it was a strange conversation, but this makes sense. Lup doesn’t need conjuration because she’s already got a summons!” Lucretia jabbed a finger on her journal as she made her point, even though it was completely insane, and also Lup didn’t do conjuration for the same reason a lot of people avoided necromancy and no one accused them of secretly making people.

“Even if any of the reasons that would be physically impossible, such as time limits and the fact that Taako can cast magic and make his own decisions and Lup is capable of casting concentration spells, I don’t know, ever; even if all those reasons didn’t apply, Lup wouldn’t fucking do that. That’s some seriously dark stuff, Lucretia.” He couldn’t believe they were even talking about this.

“Look, you have to admit it would explain some things. You’ve never wondered about how they act around conjuration magic? Let alone divination, remember when that priest wanted a look at Taako? I’ve never seen Lup book it so fast. I’m not saying it was something she meant to do, but a miscast spell early on in her learning isn’t out of the realm of possibility. I’m just asking you to think about it,” Lucretia insisted. Barry was about ten seconds from leaving the room entirely, except if he did Lucretia might convince the others of this crazy bullshit and then Barry would be surrounded by it for three more weeks until the end of the cycle.

“Stop, you two,” said Davenport. Hopefully to add some sense to the conversation. “Lucretia. It sounds to me like you’re saying that Taako was…the result of a magical accident? And not Lup’s blood brother?”

“In a way, yes. Barry would have no trouble creating a zombie with some basic intelligence, and there are spells to summon a familiar with its own separate mind from the caster. It wouldn’t be impossible for a young wizard teaching herself could accidentally conjure something up that she didn’t know how to dismiss,” Lucretia said, which Barry would have argued with but Davenport held up a hand.

“And this would relate to our current situation how?” He asked.

“Well—when I say it like this it sounds crazy,” That’s because it is, Lucretia, what the hell, “but if I summoned a mage hand that was meant to stick around permanently, and run independently of me, it would be just as solid as a regular hand. It would last as long and interact with the world the same way. But when I died it would degrade in almost exactly the same way as Taako is right now.

“It explains why Taako knew Lup was in trouble, his last words, why he tried to cast magic jar—if he could put his spirit or whatever keeps him running into a jar there might be a way to cement him as an independent creation so he wouldn’t dissolve with Lup’s death.

“And there are other things, too—do you know Taako has never, in eleven years, failed to do something Lup has told him to do? Even if she was joking. I didn’t notice at first because she avoids telling him to do anything in particular, but I’ve been looking back and it hasn’t happened once. Not a single time in eleven years. Think about it.”

Finally, Magnus spoke up, and it broke Barry’s heart to hear. “Are you saying Taako’s just…not real? I know him. He’s our friend. How could he not be real?”

Barry wanted to speak up but Davenport still had a hand up towards him and he really didn’t want to disobey the hand. He settled for scooting a little closer to Magnus and giving him a good pat on the shoulder. Magnus looked a little comforted.

“I’ll admit, that is a bit of a flaw in my thinking. The amount of power and concentration it would take to maintain a construct as intricate as a sapient humanoid being would be incredible, and not something you would expect out of a first-level wizard. Not to mention giving the appearance of interacting with his surroundings. It would be possible if Lup gave up awareness of her own body, but she’s clearly a functional being herself, and I can’t say for sure how both of them would be able to exist dynamically at the same time.” Gods, did she even hear herself? This was their family they were talking about! Sapient humanoid being, Barry’s denim-covered ass.

“So Taako…is real?” Magnus looked no less distraught but a lot more confused. “Then what happened with the whole collapsing and dying thing?”

“Well, he would be. Taako would certainly be _real_ regardless. He clearly existed, we all saw him, his body is three feet away from you. I’m just saying that he would be…not an elf. Something that looks like an elf but can’t exist without Lup wanting him to.” At least she hadn’t gone completely off the deep end. Davenport gave Barry a measured look and put his hand down, but Barry could feel the ‘don’t start something’ vibes heading his way still.

“But—look I’m not magic, but—Taako is an elf? He said so? He has big ears and magic and he doesn’t need to sleep but he does anyway?” Magnus turned to Barry, since he was now allowed back into the conversation. “He is an elf, right?”

“Yeah, Magnus, Lucretia’s going crazy.” Davenport shot him a look. “A construct has no soul. It wouldn’t be able to cast magic. If Lup had made Taako, he wouldn’t be able to cast at all and Lup wouldn’t be able to give him the appearance of casting magic whenever they were apart. I know this situation sucks, Lucretia, but we’ve gotta keep perspective. We can’t just throw stuff out there like this, that’s crazy.”

Lucretia slumped a bit and he could see his words hit her. “Maybe I was…a bit hasty saying Taako’s straight up not real. That’s…yeah, that’s a bit much. But I do think the connection they have to one another is what hit Taako when Lup died. There are just too many things that make sense that way.”

Well. If they weren’t accusing the twins of some seriously twisted magic… “Yeah, I guess that’s possible? Twins are pretty unique, and I’m pretty sure for elves they’re especially significant? So if their connection was severed when Lup died…and then if she didn’t pass on the astral plane but instead immediately skipped ahead to the start of next year, their souls would be in entirely different planar systems, and that could…theoretically, that could do some stuff. I’d have to do more research on bonds, but if a particularly strong bond just exploded on one end…maybe it would do this? I don’t know.”

Davenport perked up. “I mean, we use bonds to power the Starblaster, but we didn’t get into much research about how to weaponize them. We don’t know much about what a single strong bond could do, except that there are some pretty incredible cases of an individual affected by a threatened bond accomplishing things that would be impossible otherwise. It’s a pretty significant cause for sorcery being developed, too—a single survivor of a disaster often develops powers afterwards. It’s…not an impossible suggestion.”

“We don’t know enough to discount any of our other theories, though. It could just as well be that the elves made a copy and we can’t find him because of their defense against tracking, or that this is the result of some extremely powerful entity taking an interest due to this plane’s superstitions about elves, or something else entirely. We should keep looking into everything we can.” Barry said.

Davenport nodded. “Right. Barry, Lucretia, can you look further into bonds and see if your theory is plausible, and if so, whether it’ll have any effect on how our next cycle will start? Magnus, Merle, I want you to keep looking into the elves, it seems like they’re the only other option we can do anything about—I’m not about to pit us against any kind of extraplanar entity when we only have three more weeks in this system. For now, we’ll all be getting some sleep. We can start tomorrow morning.”

Magnus looked like he was about to protest, but Barry put a hand on his arm.

“Come on buddy, you’re not gonna find anything in the dark. Some sleep’ll be good for you, get you ready for tomorrow. Don’t make me burn a spell slot on you.” Magnus would never stop to do something silly like take care of himself when one teammate was missing or possibly dead, but that’s what they had each other for. Lucretia was harder to read, but Barry got her elbow on his way out the door.

“Sorry for…things got a little harsh in there. You’re not crazy. This is a tough situation for all of us and I should have been more…yeah.” Not his best apology, but Lucretia looked like she understood what he meant. She linked her arm with his.

“Yeah. Sorry I said Taako isn’t real.”

Magnus laughed. “I’m telling him as soon as he gets back. You’re gonna be eating cold cereal for a _month_ , Lucretia. A year! You know Taako can hold a grudge—you know, actually, in eleven years I don’t think I’ve ever seen him forgive anyone. Do you think he’s made of unforgiveness magic?”

Barry chuckled and Lucretia colored a bit but laughed along. “Not my best theory, I’ll admit. I also considered that this world was an illusion and Taako was the only one to realize it, if that helps. He got written out for knowing too much.”

“Ohhh ho ho, the ol’ Matrix scenario, I see where we’re goin’ here. Does that make Davenport Morpheus? Can I be the fantasy Russian lady?”

“No, you’re the Tank guy. The brother? Was that his name?”

“Fuck yeah, live through the first movie! Wait, no. Did he? I need to watch that again…”

* * *

 

With the kids off to bed, Davenport turned to Merle. “You’re awfully quiet.”

“Hm,” said Merle, because he could be a cryptic bastard sometimes.

Davenport sat back down and pulled out some cards. This could take a while. Merle sat with him and he dealt for solitaire.

“What are you thinking?”

Merle hummed again, but answered. “I think someone needs to talk to Taako after this.”

Yeah, Davenport had gotten that vibe too. “You think this is gonna be a problem again?”

Merle put up the two of diamonds. “I think it’s been a problem and we’re just now looking into it.”

This time it was Davenport’s turn to hum noncommittally, shuffling the rest of the deck. He waited for Merle to elaborate.

“Those two…you’ve seen their file, right? They don’t even know how old they are.” And hadn’t that been a hassle. It was hard to hire someone who couldn’t technically prove they were an adult. People had had a lot of questions about a couple of elves with no paperwork and questionable job histories going on their breakthrough mission, but Davenport had insisted on the best.

Merle continued. “Those kids keep each other going and together they can keep the whole crew moving forward, but with these cycles…we can’t have one of them blowing up as soon as the other dies. Literally or otherwise.”

Davenport straightened up the hearts pile, then looked at his old friend. Merle looked tired, careworn in the way he did when one of their crew was gone.

None of them aged anymore, but the two of them had carried their years into the trip and they were continuing to carry them through. Davenport was glad to have brought Merle with him, especially in these moments. Their crew was young, passionate, and brilliant, but Davenport would have had a hell of a time looking after them on his own.

“I’ll talk to Lup when she gets back.” They didn’t pick favorites, but Davenport knew Merle would want to talk to Taako. He’d probably want to talk to Lup too, but they were splitting responsibility on this one. Wouldn’t do any good for one of them to burn out. “Probably a good idea to talk to the others before then, too. This one’s been a rough one for all of us.”

“Will do. You wanna stop Barry and Lucretia from staying up all night and I’ll catch Magnus?” And Davenport couldn’t help a chuckle at that. These kids were going to be the death of him.

He tracked down the four of spades in one of the piles and put it up top with the rest. “Let’s finish our game first. Give ‘em some time.”

Merle hummed, and beneath the beard, Davenport could tell his friend was smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What a couple of scheming old men. No rolls this chapter because everyone was just talking to each other and I don't make them roll charisma for team talk.
> 
> As always, I am loving the comments, please let me know what you think! One of you got pretty close last time.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The mystery...shallows? More information comes our way. Lup and Taako and a stranger have a friendly, cordial discussion about souls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has a dedication! It's going out to betabookwyrm in honor of their birthday yesterday! Happy birthday!
> 
> I know Barry sounds like That Professor a lot of the time, but consider this: he is That Professor.
> 
> This one's the second to last build-up chapter, next chapter should give you the last clues you need to sort some things out. Past that, it's all details. Are you excited?

“Captain! Captain Davenport!” Davenport jolted up as his name was called and ran to the door to meet Barry and Lucretia. Both were panting and carrying their goggles, and Lucretia had a couple sheaves of paper with her.

“What’s going on? Are we under attack?” He scrambled to put his jacket on over his pajamas, skipping shoes entirely as he skidded into the corridor.

“No, no, we’re good, we found something!” Barry grinned, flush with victory and running. “We found two things.”

Davenport put his hand to his chest and willed his heart to slow down. “What was it? The elves?”

“No, not the elves. We figured out what the energy coming off the body was!” Barry grinned, and Lucretia spared a tight smile. “It’s the same energy that comes off the Light of Creation, just a tiny, tiny amount of it. Orders of magnitude smaller, and it dissipates too fast to be comparable. _And_ , if you look at it through the right lenses, there’s something else—Lucretia, show him the journal.”

Lucretia didn’t look as thrilled as Barry was, but she obligingly held out a drawing of a vague stick figure (labeled TAAKO and wearing a pointy wizard hat) with an incredibly detailed rope coming out of it, and another of the same stick figure on its side with the rope broken and sending little squiggly lines outward.

Davenport was a scientist, sure, but sometimes science could be baffling even to an expert.

“I’m gonna need some more details here.”

Barry nodded. “So that’s the bond between the subject and, you know, whatever it’s bonded to. Person, place, event, whatever. And normally, when the bond breaks unexpectedly, the snap creates a resonance—grief, anger, some additional magical energy, adrenaline, whatever. But, if the bond is really strong and existed during development—like, the person grew around it and it grew around the person—it’s theoretically possible for the bond to be a part of them. Like, removing it would cause such a shock that the person wouldn’t survive. And the energy from that bond—it’s like magnets. A complete bond with both ends attached has energy, that’s what powers the ship, but an incomplete bond—that’s nuclear. That is beyond nuclear. The kind of power being let out there is beyond anything we’ve put to work, it’s chaotic, damn near impossible to control. It’s sorcery at that point, gives someone a boost they need to awaken magic inside of them if they can survive it. And that means—I mean, that’s—well.”

Davenport nodded and Lucretia hugged her paper to her. Barry continued.

“Well, it could be that the bond between the two snapped. But Taako’s—he’s already attuned to magic, so it would take a hell of a force to knock him out with his own magic. But a bond that goes soul-deep, yeah, that would do it. This plane doesn’t have the tech or the magic to make that happen on its own unless the elves are into some serious shit.” Barry’s manic energy waned and he hunched over, fiddling with his lab goggles.

“Which they could be,” Lucretia supplied.

“Yeah. But it could just as well be some sort of crazy twin magic? Like, you hear all those stories where one twin gets hurt and the other one can feel it no matter how far away they are? This could be something like that. What’s the farthest they’ve even been apart? For how long? They understand each other intuitively, how much of that is because of time spent together and how much could be attributed to a bond? Could they get messages across if they wanted to, feelings? Would they—”

Barry stopped muttering and stared into middle distance.

“Barry?” Davenport prompted. It was best to let him talk these things out.

“Would they feel when the other dies?” Barry asked, looking at him for some sort of reassurance. “All that energy coming at them, enough to vaporize their entire body, the strength of that bond—did Taako feel that when Lup died?”

Lucretia put a hand on Barry’s shoulder, solemn. Looked like she’d already thought of that.

“Was he trying to ask for help? Was he trying to save himself? He cast magic jar—would leaving his body even help?” Barry’s voice was breaking and Davenport felt the breakdown he’d been expecting sooner or later oncoming. Lucretia’s eyes were dry but her hand fisted in Barry’s shirt.

“I don’t know, Barry.” Davenport said, because he wouldn’t lie to his crew when they were vulnerable and there was really nothing else to say. He put an arm around Barry’s waist and Barry dropped to the floor to be level. Lucretia followed him.

“He said he wasn’t ready,” Barry said to Lucretia’s shoulder. “I was right there. I could have—I should have helped him.”

“Come here, buddy.” There was really nothing for it. Davenport pulled Barry into a hug. “You too, Lucretia. Shhh.”

Not something he would do for the mission, but—this wasn’t about the mission anymore. Hadn’t been for over a decade. This was family. And Lucretia’s shoulders hitched and Barry got his shirt damp and he couldn’t find it in him to mind.

“I experimented on my friend’s dead body,” Barry sobbed. Fuck, yeah, that one was gonna be rough on him for a while, probably. “He knew he was gonna die and he asked me for help and I—I’m not like that. I’m not that kind of necromancer, I’m not that kind of person, I’m _not_.”

“I know you’re not. It wasn’t fair of me to ask you to do that. I’m sorry.” Davenport muttered, rubbing Lucretia’s back as she shook silently. Shit. Yeah, that was a goof on his part. Necromancy being what it was, Barry’d probably gotten a lot of flak about questionable ethics in his field. Fuck, he hoped Taako didn’t mind.

“I experimented on Taako’s corpse. I cut open Lup’s brother. Gods, I. I was supposed to be better than this,” Barry murmured. Lucretia lost the battle and let out a sob. The two of them were still so young.

“It’s not fair. It sucks and I’m sorry. Shhhhh, shh. They’re gonna be okay.” Someone approached down the hall and Barry stiffened. Lucretia immediately wiped her eyes and tried to make herself presentable.

“Cap’nport? I was just thinking about where to look next, and—” Magnus cut off as he saw the scene in the hallway, but it was still the middle of the goddamn night and Davenport knew a lost man when he saw one.

“Get in here, Magnus,” he said, and Magnus fell to his knees and brought all three on them into a bear hug, holding on too tightly like he’d lose them if he couldn’t keep them with him. Lucretia gave up on making herself presentable and collapsed into the embrace, and Barry muttered apologies and gripped Magnus and Davenport just as tight.

“They’re gonna come back,” Davenport told them, because humans aged so quickly and even though they were all adults they still seemed so young, “and then Taako’s gonna make breakfast for supper for three months straight, we’re all gonna get sick of it.”

“They’ll laugh at us for freaking out,” Magnus supplied. “Lup’s gonna want a celebration for being back. And she’ll wanna know if we killed the guys that got her or not.”

Davenport was getting pretty squished at this point, but he patted the nearest part of Magnus—incidentally, his bicep. “Yeah. Taako’s gonna yell at us for letting his pancakes go to waste. That’s some seven star out of five pancake batter, remember.”

He got a watery laugh for that, an old joke from when Taako had been cursed to stay awake without meditating for a whole week. By the end of it he’d barely been lucid but he’d insisted on making ‘the best damn pancakes you fuckers’ll ever eat.’ Lup had physically prevented him from burning down the kitchen and Davenport was pretty sure he hadn’t even noticed. He’d stolen Barry at the end of it and teleported them to the observation deck for a nap, not waking up for the next 36 hours.

Davenport remembered that Magnus had pouted for weeks for not being invited to cuddle time until Taako had been ‘forced’ to have a group sleepover. Waking up with all of his charges safely nestled in the rec room, each one clearly visible and out of danger and Merle at his side, had been one of the most soothing experiences of the whole decade. He also had some blackmail photos of them cuddled up like puppies—Lup was drooling on Barry in one of his favorites, it was adorable. Another had Lucretia and Taako curled around each other lying on top of an entanglement of Magnus and Barry. They’d all looked so relaxed.

Now there was an idea.

“Come on, up,” Davenport said, wriggling until he was disentangled from the group hug. “Rec room. Tonight’s movie night.”

Lucretia looked surprised past the stress and exhaustion. “Captain?”

Davenport tugged on her lab coat—actually Lup’s; the ship only had three and everyone had to share. Somehow he’d never gotten around to getting another for her. Next year. “Come on, up and at ‘em. We’re not getting any sleep tonight, might as well watch some fantasy Fast and Furious and get some sugar in us.”

Magnus brightened up, tugging Barry to his feet with him. Barry was still looking fragile, and Davenport made a note to put him on a job with Taako once he came back for some reassurance. Those two had a strange sort of brotherhood, and seeing his friend alive would do Barry good.

It didn’t take much doing to get three wrung-out humans to shuffle into a pile of blankets on the giant couch in the rec room and put on some fantasy Fast and Furious. Lup always loved the series, could quote almost every line with terrifying accuracy. Davenport got some mugs and started with some hot chocolate, chuckling along when Magnus did his best Lup impression to make an old joke. Barry was still quiet, a few tears making their way out, and held on to Lucretia, but he was exhausted and it showed in how he drooped. Davenport gave him fifteen minutes before he passed out. He joined his family on the couch and settled in for the movie.

It wasn’t long after the humans fell asleep that Merle appeared in the doorway.

“Heard the noise. Rough night?” He said. Davenport gently extracted himself from Magnus, who was doing his level best to snuggle up to each and every one of them at once. He looked troubled for a moment, but reached out and got a hold of Lucretia and tugged her closer. Barry fell across both of their laps and didn’t stir.

“I think it just hit them.” Davenport murmured, watching his crew. His remaining crew.

Merle came to stand beside him. “Yeah. Wanna play bridge?”

Davenport looked over in the flickering light of the movie. “I think I would like that.”

* * *

 

A few decades ago:

Lup knew what they said about her brother, she’d heard it all bouncing from relative to relative. She knew what they said about her, too. Too abrupt, too angry, barely elflike at all. She wasn’t graceful or she wasn’t charming or she wasn’t bad at all, it was just that brother of hers following her around all the time. Creepy. Staring. Soulless.

This latest man wasn’t an exception. Some paladin from the big city, come out to show the country folk the mercy of his god or whatever. Took one look at Taako and went white as a sheet, asked to meet the two of them out of town. Taako had taken a look right back and said his god was a liar and a coward, and he could slay demons all he wanted, he would never be as important as he believed himself to be. A speck in an indifferent universe. He’d pulled out the elven snootiness he still hadn’t quite mastered and looked up at this man, with his gleaming armor and earnest face, like he looked at any of the other childhood bullies they’d met. Stared him down, unblinking.

The paladin, sir George or Gregory or something, had gone red in the face before catching himself, closing his eyes and taking deep breaths. Taako had that effect on people. Lup stuck her tongue out.

“Young—young lady. Can I please talk to you about your…?” He gestured to Taako. “Accompaniment?”

“My brother,” Lup corrected. “His name is Taako and we’re twins.”

“Right,” said the paladin. “Of course. Would you mind?”

He gestured for her to follow him and, as always, Taako looked at her for the decision.

“Fuck no,” she said.

The paladin looked pained, but too bad. She didn’t get this far in life by following strange men around. Taako nodded and crossed his arms, scowling at the man.

“Look, I’m not going to hurt you,” he tried. “I’m a paladin, I serve—well, I suppose you can tell.”

He gestured to his shield, carrying his holy symbol. “I just want to ask the two of you a couple questions. Nothing bad, I was just startled when I saw you. I’ll treat you to lunch?”

Tempting, but they were staying with their grandfather, which meant a steady source of food without paladins involved. Lup raised an eyebrow. “How about some cash?”

The paladin looked at her. She looked back at him. He looked at Taako, remembered that Taako was disconcerting to look at at the best of times, and looked back to her. She tapped her foot.

“I...suppose I can give you five dollars? For some questions?” He asked uncertainly. Hah, holy man wasn’t used to bribing kids.

“Fuck that. Thirty.” Taako joined her for the con, mirroring her tapping foot. She crossed her arms too.

The man reared back when Taako spoke up again, hand on his big, shiny greatsword. Lup and Taako got ready to run, but he let it go. “Look, I’m willing to give you fifteen dollars to explain some things to me, young lady. I won’t hurt you, I promise. I’ll be at Wheatback Cave tonight, that’s where I’ve been staying. Come by any time.”

He breathed sharply through his nose and watched Taako the whole time as he walked away.

“We gonna meet that guy?” Taako asked her, staring him down as he walked into the blacksmith. Lup shrugged.

“Fifteen dollars and he’ll just poke at you for a bit? Sounds like a good time. You okay with it?” She kept an eye out too, but the guy was a paladin. What was he gonna do, preach them to death?

“If you want to, I’m right behind you,” Taako replied. “Let’s get going, we’ve gotta finish our chores before we leave tonight.”

* * *

 

That night, just after supper, the two of them were picking their way down the path to Wheatback Cave. It was summer and the sun still had a while before setting, and they were elves either way. Darkness would put them at an advantage. The paladin was kneeling before his sword and praying, because paladins never do anything interesting. Lup brushed against a branch to announce their presence.

“Oh, young lady. I thought you weren’t coming, I’m glad you’re here.” He started to his feet and held out a hand to her. She gave him an awkward high five—like fuck was she letting some guy kiss her hand like some kind of noble or something. Taako he completely ignored except for a lingering, suspicious glance.

“Name’s Lup, this is Taako. What did you want to know?” Magic folks were always interested in Taako—last time they’d had a divination wizard through, they freaked him out but good. Lup was 50/50 on whether they could run this guy out of town.

“My name is sir Gregory Grimauldis, traveling with my page Thomas. He’s sleeping in the inn tonight, I thought you wouldn’t want to be outnumbered. Could you—does he have to be here for this?” The paladin looked massively uncomfortable with Taako’s presence, but she’d give him points for meeting them alone. The divination wizard had started shaking when Taako gave him a nasty look.

Speaking of which, Taako was sneering at this guy, too. “If you can say it to Lup you can say it to me. What, you want me to leave my sister alone with a strange man?”

The paladin coughed into his glove. “No! Of course, I—fine. When did you meet this ‘Taako’?”

“Right out the womb, I guess. How do twins work where you’re from?” Lup spied an apple next to old Greg’s bag and glanced at Taako, who glanced back at her with a truly devious grin. He sprawled out next to the fire, apparently wide open to an attack and gesturing distractingly with his hands as she shuffled closer.

“No, I’m—where did you _come from_ ,” said the paladin.

“Your momma, next question,” said Taako.

“What even are you? Wait, just—there,” Greg muttered out an arcane phrase and Lup felt a bit fuzzy all of a sudden. She abandoned the apple and grabbed Taako, hauling him to his feet before half a second had passed.

“No, wait, it’s not going to hurt you! I just cast zone of truth, it just keeps you from lying. Look, now I can’t lie either,” the guy said, which, cool, unless he’s lying about that.

“Why did you want to talk to us,” Lup tried.

“I just want to know what that is and why you think it’s your brother. If it is really just an elf, no harm done. I just want to make sure you’re safe.” The paladin was doing his earnest paladin face, and Lup was pretty sure she could buy it. She sat back down, a little closer to the backpack this time, but kept her brother closer to her too. Taako didn’t protest.

“Tell me what you are,” the paladin ordered Taako.

“No,” Taako said, “tell me what _you_ are.”

The guy seemed to be developing a headache. “You—there’s something wrong with your soul. Are you aware of that?”

Yeah, fuck this guy. Lup took a big bite out of the apple and crunched obnoxiously.

“There’s no problem, I’m exactly how I’m meant to be,” said Taako. He held out a hand for the apple and Lup gave it to him so he could take a big crunch of his own.

The paladin squinted at him. “You’ll bolt if I cast any more spells, won’t you.”

“Sure will,” Lup said but did not mean to say. Fuck this guy and his truth spells. Greg leaned in and stared deeply at Taako.

“What are you…? You don’t—do you even have a soul? Where is it?” He muttered, squinting and tilting his head like he could make Taako make sense if he looked at a different angle. Lup had seen that one tried before. Never worked.

“Nope,” Taako said. Fuck yeah, the spell had a time limit.

“Been fucking fantastic meeting you, Greg-Grim, but I’m gonna need that fifteen dollars out of you,” Lup meant to say. What came out was, “I hate when you guys stare at my brother like some kind of experiment. Greg-Grim, I’m gonna need that fifteen dollars out of you.”

Not a time limit, then. Some kind of resistance, and Taako had made it but she hadn’t? How was she to know whether Greg had made his or not, then?

“Young lady, I’m sorry, but I don’t think this is your brother,” said Greg. Fuck him anyway.

“Fuck off, he is.” She grabbed Taako’s hand and climbed to her feet—this wasn’t fun anymore. “Fifteen dollars. We’re leaving.”

But of course Greg Grimauldis couldn’t leave well enough alone. He picked up his sword and Lup retreated a few steps—he could probably outpace them in a fair race, best to find something shiny to distract his attention first. Taako pushed her behind him and she pushed him back.

“I need you to tell me what you are. Reveal yourself!” There was a flash of holy light and Taako barely dodged it. He dived one way and Lup went the other. Greg was facing Taako and he’d discarded the sheath of his sword behind him—heavy and plated in gold and precious gemstones. Lup snuck forward.

“I said reveal yourself, demon! Release this girl from your clutches!” Lup could barely lift the sheath, and she might have gained some respect for Greg if not for the fact that—actually, if not for a lot of facts. Most pressingly was that he’d swung his sword at her brother—missed, but that shit was dangerous and Lup wasn’t a fan. Taako locked eyes with her over Greg’s shoulder but couldn’t communicate anything without drawing Greg’s attention to her. Lup grinned at him and he looked grim.

Taako refocused on Greg and stuck his tongue out. “Fuck off, Craigory!”

Not his best material but she’d give him points for a stressful situation. He danced back half a step, not wanting to leave Greg’s immediate area in case he remembered Lup’s presence but not a fan of the giant sword being waved in his face either.

Lup raised the sheath above her head. Greg raised his arms to swing again, but she struck first. A solid blow to the back of the head and he was down, dazed or unconscious but probably not dead. She didn’t stick around to find out.

“Let’s go let’s go let’s go!” She hissed to Taako, grabbing his hand and sprinting into the woods. He followed easily and they sprinted down the path, off at a deer track and to a stream. There was a little cave about a mile upstream they’d kitted out with some food and blankets—people knew they went there and mostly left it alone. Hopefully Greg wouldn’t know to look. Did paladins have tracking spells?

They walked through the river—they hadn’t seen a dog, but better safe than cleaved in half by a crazy fanatic—and reached the cave in record time, ducking in and huddling up by the entrance to watch. Just in case.

“Can’t believe that fucker,” Lup muttered. “Never gave me my fifteen dollars.”

Taako patted her shoulder. “We can steal it off him later.”

“Fuck no, bro-bro, we’re never seeing that guy again. We live here until he gets out of town. Can you believe what he said about you?” Lup let herself get worked up about it now, away from the danger and free to see that sword coming down towards her brother. “No soul my fantastic elven _ass_ , he should be checking his own damn soul. Don’t think fuckin’ child murder is on your god’s to-do list, jackass!”

Taako laughed a bit. “I mean, I don’t think it would count if he didn’t kill you. He made his stance on people without souls pretty clear.”

Lup whipped around to face him. “Don’t you listen to that son of a bitch. You have a soul just like anyone else, Taako, and anyone who says otherwise can go fuck themselves.”

Taako tilted his head at her and she curled a fist in his tunic. “I’m serious, bro, they’re not worth half of you.”

“This is really important to you,” Taako said, slow like he was trying the words out. “You really want me to have a soul?”

Lup stopped, let go of his shirt. Smoothed it out. “Taako, do you really not think you have a soul?”

He hadn’t said anything to her—never mentioned taking the rumors seriously, scoffed right next to her when they talked about creepy staring eyes or how he never seemed to leave Lup’s side. She’d thought he was fine, but…

“I don’t,” he said. “I didn’t think I needed one?”

“No, Taako, everyone needs a soul. You can’t—if you don’t have a soul you aren’t connected to magic, no one is not connected to magic. You’d die.” Lup’s hands look for a place to be on her brother’s head, his shoulders, his arms, back up to his shoulders again. Smoothed his hair back like she could distantly remember someone doing for her.

“Where can I get one?” Taako asked, blank-faced and breaking her heart. He hated it when she cried, but she could feel a sniffle coming up.

“Taako, I promise, if you really don’t have a soul you can have mine,” She said, pulling him in for a tight hug. He wrapped his arms around her with little hesitation.

“But—you need your soul?”

She squeezed tighter, tucked his head into her shoulder and glared back at the way they came, at the village, at everyone who would make her brother think this about himself. “We’ll share. I’m older so I’ll keep most of it but you can have as much as you need. Right?”

It was an old joke, for food, for clothes, for anything they didn’t get enough of—one or the other would always say that as the oldest they had the right to it, but they both knew it would be an even fifty-fifty in the end. Neither of them would thrive if it meant the other was scraping by.

Taako nuzzled into her and really began reciprocating the hug. “Right.”

And then light.

And then pain.

And then nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise I have nothing against paladins. Also I didn't actually choose a god for Greg Grimauldis, because a lot of dnd gods are based off real gods and I didn't want to make anyone's god an antagonist. Also that would have required research, which I have done a bizarre amount of already for this fic. Paladins do get zone of truth, btw. Someone tell Merle they're stealing his thing.
> 
> There was one roll in this entire chapter larger than a 10 and it was Lup's stealth, contested by the only other two-digit number in this chapter, Greg's 10. My girl is good. Literally everyone else apparently sucks? I blame Greg.
> 
> As always, let me know what you think!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lup and Taako, as children.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since I'm doing dedications anyway, I think this chapter goes out to schneefink, who I think may have found my tumblr page??? It's hahanoiwont.tumblr.com if anyone wants to drop by and chat! Please?
> 
> This chapter features the return of one of Taako's terrible, terrible metaphors, and a Lup that I would absolutely love to never cross, ever.

Taako could hear something, distantly. The babble of a spring, a dog barking, voices. Lup wasn’t far from him, but she seemed…off? Everything seemed off. He wasn’t really supposed to be unconscious. Lup let him because she was nice and he loved her but it was careless for both of them to really sleep at the same time.

“You sure they’re in here?” said someone, not far off. Looking for them? Taako’s chest squeezed but not like it normally did. He wanted Lup. She was right there and he didn’t know what he wanted her for but he felt too full and wrong and he wanted his sister.

“That’s where they hang out when they need to be off for a while. You sure you can help them?” Grandpa. He was good, he provided for them. Taako didn’t like the other voice, but he was struggling to figure out why past all the _bad_ he felt. He opened his eyes and everything was too bright, too close, too vibrant, and he was right in the middle of it slumped over a rock with Lup opposite him. She was huddled against the cave wall like she’d been thrown there. It didn’t look comfortable and Taako wanted to fix it.

He wasn’t really supposed to want to coddle her, he didn’t think, but lately…and right now, especially…

Well. His failures notwithstanding, something was wrong. He struggled to concentrate on the problem and not curl up with Lup and—do something. Cling. Yell a lot. Ugh, embarrassing.

There was a shadow in the mouth of the cave. A man, big and imposing and carrying a sword. Taako didn’t like him, and he didn’t like Taako either. Right, the paladin. Gregory Grimauldis. He owed Lup fifteen dollars and he tried to kill Taako.

Hah.

“You owe my sister fifteen dollars,” Taako croaked. His voice sounded bad. Had he been screaming? No, he was with Lup, Lup wouldn’t do that. Lup let him go soft. Lup liked him better when he was soft. He really wasn’t supposed to want Lup to like him so badly.

The man startled, which, fair. Taako wouldn’t expect someone sprawled across a cave like they’d been shot to talk either. He should stand up but he ached and he didn’t want to move. He did anyway.

“What have you done to her?” Gregory whispered. Unfair. Taako wouldn’t do anything to Lup.

“You talkin’ ‘bout Lup or your mama?” Not his best material. He dragged himself between Lup and the threat, shaky and wobbling. “How about you leave us alone and I won’t kick your ass.”

The paladin didn’t seem convinced. To be fair, Taako was barely standing, and he wanted very badly to lie down. He probably wouldn’t be intimidated either. Lup groaned behind him and Taako stiffened. He needed to get this guy out fast, he needed to take care of his sister. Lup was great, she let him be her brother and she was nice to him and she didn’t want him to do awful things. Taako wondered if maybe he could stay with her forever, but that was silly. No, wait, Greg. Paladin. Focus.

“You’re a monster,” Gregory hissed. “I should have finished you last night. Gods forgive me, I was too late to save Lup, but I can make sure this ends here.”

“Fuck off,” said Taako. Lup was sitting up behind him. He reached a hand back and waved it until he felt her hair and patted it. Just touching her, hearing her move, something awful and empty inside him began to loosen. He hadn’t realized he’d been so afraid that he’d done something to hurt her. What had he done?

“Taako? I don’t feel so good,” she muttered. One of her hands found his and for a second Greg disappeared, the cave disappeared, everything disappeared.

There was no reason for Taako to think it, but suddenly he was sure. This is what being a person was supposed to feel like. This was what it meant to be real, to be whole, to exist. Standing between his sister and danger, knowing she had his back and he had hers, something deep and fresh and aching began to heal.

Fuck, that wasn’t supposed to happen.

The paladin lunged forward and caught him with his longsword—luckily just a graze, but when he moved back to dodge he’d jostled Lup out of her stupor.

“What the fuck, you again?” She asked, scrambling to her feet. “Taako, you okay?”

“Yeah, buddy-boy here couldn’t hit the side of a barn,” he said, glancing at the tear in his shirt. It had a little blood on it. That was distressing, he was distressed. He wasn’t supposed to be able to feel distressed. He needed to figure out what had happened.

Lup tugged him forward and they dashed out of the cave. The paladin lunged and Taako flinched instead of taking the blow for Lup. It felt weird. He was scared of getting hit again. But they didn’t have time to stop and they were out and sprinting before they could even adjust to the sun.

Taako ran straight into Lup’s back as she ran straight into someone else. “Grandpa?” she asked.

Right, yeah, there had been another voice, hadn’t there? And a dog, Fajita from the farm. Grandpa didn’t look too good, pale and drawn.

“Lup…Taako.” He was looking at them funny. He was looking at them _wrong_. Taako clutched Lup’s hand and backed up, but the only way to go was into the cave.

“Grandpa?” Taako echoed, but his voice sounded all wrong, watery and shaking. His vision was blurring. Was he broken?

“Children, this man is here to help you. He can heal you if you just let him. Just step back into the cave,” Grandpa said. “It’ll be over soon. You’ll be so much happier. Don’t you want to get better?”

Greg hadn’t seemed too interested in fixing them. Was Taako too broken to be repaired? Why hadn’t anyone told him? What had he done wrong? He looked to Lup for answers.

Lup wasn’t bothering to think about it. She glared at their grandfather like she glared at anyone who talked about Taako and for some reason he felt warm. Warm and grippingly empty and overfull all at once.

“There is _nothing_ wrong with Taako and there is _nothing_ wrong with me,” she snarled. “That man tried to kill us. Move.”

Right. Right. He’d hurt Lup and he had to be stopped. Taako wished he could focus. He wished things would make sense for a moment, just to allow him to breathe. But Lup was pulling him and if she was leaving, he would go.

They sprinted past their grandfather and Taako caught an arm in the stomach as he tried to catch them but he pushed forward and they got down the path and that was all they needed. Grandpa Tostaada was old and the paladin was in heavy armor, and they were two elven children running for their lives. Fajita might have been able to catch them, but she was more concerned with investigating the cave.

“What did—what happened?” Lup gasped as they went.

“Dunno. Something’s wrong, I feel wrong,” Taako said, because this was Lup and she would help him.

“Me too. I think I’m gonna be sick.” They didn’t really have time for that. On a whim Taako looked at their intertwined hands and focused. He wasn’t supposed to be able to do magic…he pushed, with his mind, like he’d tried to a hundred times before. _I have energy. I have more energy than I can handle. Please, my sister needs it._

And there was a glow, a feeling of a push, and a weight lifted off of Taako’s chest and Lup gasped. Her face colored and he realized how gray she’d looked. She snapped her head back to him, but he had to tug her out of the way before she tripped over a root and she turned back to the road ahead of them.

“What was that?” She demanded. “That was, that was incredible! Taako, what did you do?”

This wasn’t really the time or the place…but she’d told him to tell her what he’d done…but it was a really, really terrible idea to try to talk and also run for their lives…

“Trust me for a bit? Once we’re out of here, I don’t really know but I have a guess, but we’ve gotta go. Please, Lup?” He had vague memories, sense impressions more than anything, telling him not to fight her. She knew what was right, he just needed to help her and do what she said. But he was also supposed to keep her alive and not skewered and Lup wouldn’t hurt him for suggesting something else. That was stupid and Lup was brilliant.

“Yeah. Of course. Think that clearing with the fairy circle’s good?” She was already getting short of breath, and he was too. He shook his head but she couldn’t see it.

“Too close. And it’s a fairy circle, don’t fuckin’ trust those things. Bend in the creek where we saw the frog?” It had been a hell of a frog, too. It should be far away enough, right? How far would one paladin and an old man go?

“Think there’s still that den upstream from there?” The landscape was becoming more sparsely forested and rocky, inclining sharply in twists and turns. It would be easier to see pursuers soon, but easier to be spotted, too.

“Find out soon,” Taako panted.

It took three hours to get to the old den next to the creek. A family of bears had lived there, but they’d moved on or been hunted and the den was mostly abandoned. If you didn’t mind the smell or the trek to get up there, it was sheltered and warm in the winter, and it offered a spectacular view of the valley below. Taako kept a nervous watch on the lights of the village and the slope up to the den.

“Ugh. I feel like shit,” Lup groaned. She’d slumped straight on to her face on the bare ground.

“Sorry. I think that might be my fault. I didn’t mean to,” Taako said. “I didn’t think anything would happen.”

She opened one eye to look at him and he sat down next to her. “What did happen?”

He started combing his hands through her hair, a nervous habit. That was something else he wasn’t supposed to have, but Lup had taught him a lot of things about being alive.

“You remember last night?” He asked quietly. Lup hummed and rolled her shoulders, giving him space to work.

“Hard to forget,” she said.

Taako laughed. And then he startled, because he—well, they’d both made jokes before, and they’d been funny, and he’d laughed. But now—that was hilarious! Fuck, did she remember last night. What kind of question was that? Hey, Lup, remember how that guy tried to kill us? Did you forget in, fuckin’, half a day or something? He leaned his forehead on her back, giggling. Hard to forget, hah.

Lup didn’t seem to get her moment of comedic genius, because she propped herself up on her elbows and twisted to look at him.

“Hey, Taako, is this, uh, shock? How many fingers am I holding up?” She wasn’t even holding up any fingers, just staring at him like he’d grown another head. He let out another guffaw. Gods, had he ever been blessed when he’d gotten her as a sister. He couldn’t resist to urge to give her a hug, giggling all the while.

She twisted but he didn’t really want to let go, so she flipped him to his side and wrestled him to the ground. “Alright, come on, what’s up?”

Finally the laughter passed and he could breathe. His chest hurt, and his face. It was a good hurt.

“Can’t I be glad to have the best sister?” he asked. “You fought a paladin for me! You were so cool! And you—Lup, I am having a lot of feelings for the first time right now, it’s very a lot. Lup, I think you gave me a part of your soul.”

And breathless, giggling, still a child by so many standards, Taako began to understand what it meant to be Lup’s brother. She grinned and wrestled him and didn’t regret it.

“Does that mean I’m really the older one now?” She asked him, later, when his newfound energy wore down.

“Nah, I’m older than your puny mind could comprehend,” he drawled, lying on his back and looking at the stars. A fire was too risky but they could see in the dark.

“Seriously, Taako. Is this your birthday now? If you didn’t have a soul before, how were you, like, sentient?” She was looking up too, but she paused to look at him. He shrugged.

“Just was, I guess. I still had feelings and all—obviously. Remember I socked Joey in the mouth last week? That was totally feelings, I thought it was a good idea at the time but now I’m pretty sure it was feelings.” She laughed.

“He deserved it. So, what, you had a fake soul? Like a baby one?” She asked. He waved his hand noncommittally.

“Fuck if I know. Something’s been keeping me going, consciousness is, like, a thing. I don’t really know a lot about souls.” He should probably look into it, though, if he was gonna have one now. Already it seemed like a whole new world.

“I’ll help. Does that mean I don’t have a soul now?” Fuck, he hadn’t thought of that. Could Lup live without a soul? Would him having her soul hurt her? Fuck. He looked at her intently.

“Hey, Lup, I think it would be a good and morally upright idea to kill the next person we see.”

“What the fuck, Taako.”

He grinned. “Nah, you’ve got it. I’m just, you know, sharing it maybe?”

She stared at him flatly, both of them rolled on to their sides now to maintain eye contact. “You didn’t have a problem with _killing people_ before?”

Right. Yeah, that was. Maybe not the optimal way to go about that?

“I mean, I knew it was wrong…I wouldn’t have done it if you didn’t ask me to…” he hedged.

“So I could have told you to murder some guy and you’d have done it? No questions asked?” Fuck, this was going into upsetting territory. He really didn’t want to make her unhappy.

“No? No. I would have felt bad? Like I probably would have made sure you really wanted to first, like, make sure it wasn’t a spur of the moment thing you would regret later. I mean if you wanted to kill someone you’d probably have a good reason to?” Taako was pretty okay at talking until he was out of trouble usually, if only because people got freaked out when he looked at him too long (and that hurt his feelings now, what the fuck), but that had never worked with Lup. Luckily, she nodded.

“Yeah, I mean I guess if you wanted to kill someone I’d probably do it. That makes sense.” She rolled back. “And now we can share our soul and we can learn magic together!”

Learning magic. Real, actual magic. It had been a quiet fantasy of his, completely impossible but oh he wished it weren’t, but now he had a soul. Well, he had a timeshare on part of a soul.

“Do you think we could?” he asked.

He felt Lup shrug. “You did that thing earlier today, I don’t see why not.”

Taako felt like he could burst. Magic. For him! He could take something and turn it into something else! He could make fire or understand life force or maybe, some day—

Well. There were some things that would always be impossible. It was stupid to hope for.

But he might be able to do magic, now.

Taako had a hell of a time meditating that night, too buzzed up on the energy of having a soul and trying to feel the surge and push of it with every second. It pulled and pulled and pulled towards Lup, but it never left him, warm and glowing in his chest.

By the time dawn came, he could make it visible, and it was like a rope made of ethereal fire that connected him to Lup no matter where he was, with a little bright coal always anchored in him. When he pushed or pulled too hard at it, Lup would jump and her ears would twitch and she’d punch him in the shoulder. When she pushed back he could feel it like a punch to the gut but not painful, somehow.

And when he carefully felt out the ragged, grasping edges, they began to hurt less. His new soul connected him to Lup, forever and always (he hoped, please gods don’t let anyone take his soul from him), but it was his now too. He had a soul of his very own. There were so many things he could never have and now he had one of them and it was a part of him.

Those same edges happened to have a hell of a lot of magical energy, too. He and Lup got a head start on their studies of magic due to the sudden well of sorcery they got from a split soul, and while the power waned as it healed, they had magic in their blood and there wasn’t a thing that could stop them from using it.

They hit the road just before dawn that morning and they kept going. They kept going for a very long time.

* * *

 

Decades later, they were lounging in the back of a cart peeling apples when Lup finally got up the nerve to ask.

“Taako, do you ever think about the future?” She didn’t look up, just kept sliding away with her knife over the barrel of peels. The road would mask the noise of their conversation.

 She could feel Taako looking at her, but he passed up the joke. “All the time.”

“No, not like—I mean, our future. Are we gonna be on the caravan track forever? Open a restaurant and settle down? Are we gonna be somebody some day?” Her smooth slices got choppy and jagged as she got nervous, but Taako’s were steady and methodical as always. He didn’t worry about these kinds of things.

As if to prove it, Taako said, “I know we’re gonna be somebody someday, Lup. You’re gonna be incredible in whatever you choose to be, and I’m gonna do whatever it takes to get you there.”

Which, okay, very sweet, but not really what she’d been looking for. She decided to just say it. “I wanna go to school for magic. Like, in one place. At a university.”

Taako nodded. “Then we’ll go. What do we need to do to get ready?”

Well if that wasn’t too easy… “Are you okay with that?”

She’d been expecting a fight, honestly, maybe a big one like they hadn’t had since Auntie was killed. Taako loved cooking, got fidgety when they were in one place too long, didn’t trust people who weren’t temporary. Studying for fantasy GEDs would be his idea of hell.

Still, he just shrugged and kept peeling an apple in a perfect spiral. “Yup.”

“No, seriously. This is a big life decision and I want to know if you’re okay with it.” She put her apple in the peeled basket and didn’t pick up another one. He paused, too, looking at her quizzically, and then kept going. There was a nick in his spiral peel.

“Lup, I know you want my opinion on things and normally that’s great, that’s fantastic, but seriously. I don’t have one. If that’s what you’ve decided to do then we’ll do it.” He put his peeled apple down and picked up a new one, hacking away a bruise.

“Bullshit, don’t you start with that subservient crap.” He had to have some thoughts one way or another. Taako loved magic, loved that he could do it, hadn’t stopped showing off for months when he got his part of their soul under control well enough for prestidigitation. And he hated being told what to do, though that was probably Lup’s influence.

Taako put down his new apple and moved the peel basket out from between them. Serious time. “I don’t—I really don’t care, Lup. I am physically, spiritually incapable of forming an opinion about this life decision. Or any life decisions you make. Like if you told me tomorrow we were gonna kill everyone we know, I can recognize right now that I would feel bad about it as an idea, but if you told me you wanted to do it I would do it and I wouldn’t care. I can’t have an opinion about this.”

And once again Lup cursed all the laws that made her brother what he was, that told him he couldn’t have a soul and he had to follow her orders and he couldn’t want things for himself. She hated everything in this world and any other that told him he couldn’t be a person, and she could work as hard as she wanted to give him freedom, but without properly understanding the magic behind his existence she couldn’t help him escape it. That was why they needed to go to school for this. He said it wasn’t possible, but she had to try. She had to make it possible. There’s always a way to cheat with magic.

“So if I’d wanted to go with—who’s that creep, he thought we were hot? Chad?” Disgusting little man, offered them safety in return for a threesome. She wouldn’t have touched him with a ten-foot pole before the offer, and Taako had only just restrained her from killing him afterwards.

“Is that what you’ve decided?” Taako asked, and Gods, he was taking it seriously.

“No! You hated that idea as much as I did! You kicked him in the face!” Never let it be said that Taako didn’t get his licks in when they were deserved. Taako looked relieved.

“Then I hate it. As an abstract idea I hate it. As something we could be forced into I hate it. As something you’ve decided to do, though, Lup I just can’t. I’m not allowed to fight you on this. Whatever you decide, I have to make it happen.” He put his hand on top of hers like she was the one hurt by this, ducked down to meet her eyes.

Fuck.

“That’s fucked up. That’s so fucked up. I can’t just—I’m not gonna force you to take your fantasy GEDs! What the fuck!” She clenched her fists and unclenched them, wanting to get up and pace but lacking the space for it. She hopped off of the cart and started jogging to keep up with it just to burn some energy. Taako kept a hold of her hand.

“Look, it makes sense, right? Like, what if you wanted to save the world from a big jelly monster and I was afraid of jelly so I wanted to run away? The world would end because I’m squeamish. I can’t be allowed fuck up something that important, it’s just not practical. Really, Lup, just—be pragmatic about this, it makes everything easier for you, right? Whatever you decide, I’ll automatically be happy about it. It’s for the better, really.” Wow, she hated every word he was saying. He seemed to understand that he was losing her somewhere in his logic, but as was often the case, he’d missed the part where he was a _person_ and he should be _allowed_ to _not like things_.

Jogging after the cart wasn’t making her feel any better, so she tugged Taako’s hand and he helped her back up. “Is that how you feel, Taako, or is that how you’re being made to feel?”

This time it was her holding on to his hand, ducking down to catch his eye. He’d been prepared for something, but not that. He looked lost.

“What?” he asked.

“Is that how you feel, Taako, or is that how you have to feel because of some bullshit rule made by someone who didn’t know what they were talking about,” she insisted. He flinched.

“I don’t know if there’s a difference,” he whispered. “I don’t—I can’t resent what I am, Lup, I’m made to serve. You made it so I can care about other things, and thank you for that, but—I don’t think I can fix this. I can’t do it alone.”

Taako fell silent, wincing. This was the closest her brother would come to asking for her help—much closer than he was supposed to, and she’d done that to him. She couldn’t regret sharing her soul with him, though. She loved her brother in any form, but he’d been so much happier being able to use magic and feel things without a barrier. Surely, surely she could separate him from his service once and for all if she just found a way. He said it wasn’t magic she could study that had made him, but there had to be something. She wouldn’t let her brother suffer for something as simple as wanting a life.

“This isn’t gonna be how it is forever, Taako. I’m gonna cut you loose and you’re gonna have every fuckin’ opinion. Some day I’m gonna suggest something dumb or pick a fight and you’re just gonna sock me in the mouth and come up with a way to cheat with magic and no rules are gonna stop you.” She grabbed his face, turned him to look her in the eye. “You hear me? Taako’s gonna be a free elf.”

His ears, still unpracticed and clumsy with expressing his emotion, began to perk up and swivel towards her, shaking of their usual sluggishness. She was pretty sure Taako wasn’t allowed to do things like hope for freedom, but he looked pretty damn teary and Lup was ready to stick it to whatever entity or organization had made him. Round three thousand and twelve, score goes to Lup.

“Is that what you’ve decided?” Taako stared her in the eyes.

“Yes,” she said. She ruffled his hair and he didn’t even protest.

“Then we’ll make it happen,” he grinned.

“And that’s a promise!” She finished, and brought him in for a hug.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rolls for this chapter: Greg's 3 beat Taako's intimidation check, so that's about how that went. Did you know Greg Grimauldis has had I think 10 rolls and only twice gotten over a 10? But he keeps beating Taako at things, it's real bad. Get it together, Taako.
> 
> There was supposed to be one more scene in this chapter of Taako and Lup deciding to apply for the Starblaster crew, but it turned out pretty long and I didn't want to wear anyone out. I might put it into the next chapter or I might throw it out, who knows.
> 
> Please let me know how you liked it! I thrive off praise!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lup and Taako decide to go to space. We get a peek at how Taako's been since Lup died.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was this supposed to be the final chapter??? Oops. Yeah the final chapter turned out to be heckin' LONG and I split it in to a tiny interlude, a first part, and a second part. So there's that.
> 
> Check out the end note for some fic ideas I've got running around, I'd like to know what y'all think I should work on next.

Taako kicked open the door. “You know what’s fuckin’ _rad_ , Lup?”

Lup looked up from the textbook she’d been dutifully skimming while thinking about that chick from the conjuration department. She was cute but she kept saying that experimenting on souls was wrong, and like, yeah, absolutely, but Lup’s brother’s free will was on the line and she didn’t have time for an ethics board. She’d had so much interesting theory on the links between constructs and their conjurers, though…

Still. Taako was grinning at her expectantly and carrying an improbable amount of textbooks he must have bullied out of some professor. She set the book down and sprung to her feet to catch some before his levitation wore off. “What’s fuckin’ rad, brother mine?”

He nodded his thanks as she took the top few books off the pile and swept aside some old notebooks from the spare chair.

“Space,” he said decisively. “Space is _fucking radical_.”

Lup grinned—she’d been waiting for this. She ruffled her brother’s hair, and stuck under his research, he couldn’t escape in time.

“Aww, ET wants to phone home?” She cooed.

“I’m not a fuckin’ alien, shut up,” he pouted. “Space is fucking amazing. Can you imagine? Fuckin’… _space_ , Lup. Everywhere ever that we haven’t gone and it’s just _out ther_ e.”

“Right?” She encouraged, grabbing a couple of fantasy instant ramen cups and throwing them out. It had been a while since they’d cleaned, hadn’t it?

“I’d start a cult,” her brother declared. “Every damn plane, every planar system, every planet, at least one Taako cult. Maybe two or three on some of ‘em so we can watch them duke it out.”

“What, no Lup cult?” There was finally space, just barely, for the massive amount of reading material her brother went through in his first week of a new interest. Lup was hoping this one would last a while. She suspected it would.

Taako gave an exaggerated eye roll and collapsed onto the bed. “My damn life is a Lup cult, start your own. I’m gonna be an alien god first.”

She giggled and threw herself directly on his lungs, bouncing twice before settling back with her textbook. “Fine, I’ll just be the _trans_ portation.”

He wheezed. “That was funny three decades ago, Lup, you gotta come up with something new.”

He was smiling, though. She mage handed a book from the stack over but didn’t get off of him. “Would kinda suck being stuck on a spaceship all the time, though. Same crew every day? You’d go crazy.”

He wouldn’t. “Nah, you’d be there. The alien adventures of Lup and Taako, we could make a TV show.”

She wriggled so that she wasn’t half-suffocating him, ‘accidentally’ getting an elbow or two in his ribs on the way. He mussed up her hair in revenge but she didn’t let it get into an all-out war.

“Bomb-ass TV show,” she agreed.

“Fuck yeah.” He didn’t offer any more, opening up his new book eagerly. It was about planes and their intersection with space-time. What a nerd.

“I heard there was a date announced on that new ship being operational,” she said casually. She flipped a page in her book. Taako’s ear flicked hers.

“Yeah? They finally stopped pushing it back?” He asked. He’d been following it for two years now, from development to construction. He’d guaranteed her the biggest celebration of her life on the day it launched, because it was a ‘bomb-ass scientific advancement.’

“Yup. They say it’ll be up and running by the end of the year. They might even start picking a crew soon.” She kept her face carefully neutral. Taako glanced over to her but didn’t notice anything amiss, or if he did he didn’t show it.

“Anyone we know, you think? Not Prof Vanderbusen, I hope.” He picked at a nail.

“Nah, fuck that guy. I hear they’re looking into some younger people, recent graduates and stuff. Up-and-comings, young notables in their fields, you know.” This time he was suspicious. He shot her a look.

“This is all just small talk, right? Like, if you were trying to say something you’d tell me.” She tried to look uninterested while watching her brother intently. _Come on, Taako, you can do it_.

“Totally. Can you imagine us going to space? What a laugh.” His ears drooped as he bought it hook, line, and sinker. They hadn’t figured out how to let him have feelings about decisions that were still being made, but if she’d already decided something he could be disappointed or excited. Fuck yeah.

“Right,” he said. “Yeah, who can imagine.”

He tried for a smile, but this mission was the most exciting damn thing in his life and he knew she knew it. Already she could see the gears turning as he tried to figure out whether she was psyching him out, and then tried not to figure it out because if he did he wouldn’t be able to form feelings about it, and then moved back to trying to figure it out so he could pretend not to be disappointed if she really didn’t want to go to space. What a guy, her brother. Still, she was pretty sure she had her answer.

“Hypothetically, that’s a pretty cool mission,” he finally tried, eyeing her, ready to stop talking if she gave him any hint of disagreement. “Seeing new things. Changing how we understand planar interactions. Getting up close and personal with bond-run technology. Hell, I’d kind of wanna poke at it myself, see if our soul thing did something with it.”

She kept her face uninterested and her real eyes on her book while she cast arcane eye to get a look at his face. Waste of a spell slot, some would say, but most people didn’t have to be as careful as she and Taako did about decisions. She wasn’t making this one without him.

When she didn’t say anything, he continued.

“There would be new magic. Lots of new magic. The people who go are gonna find stuff no one’s ever seen before.” Taako fucking loved new magic; this was as good as an outright admission. He loved being able to do magic and every time he found something new he could do it was like the whole world opened up to him. That wonderment was what formed half of her love for magic, really.

He smiled, big and dreamy like he rarely did as he let himself go with the fantasy. “Sometimes I—”

His smile disappeared and he cut off. He tried again.

“Sometimes—if you—I—we could—I’m stuck.” Fuck. He’d thought himself into a corner. It had happened before, where what he thought she wanted went against what he was supposed to do and he ran himself into a wall trying to override his programming, but it sucked every time. He kept trying until she cut in.

“I applied to the mission and said we’re a package deal.” Immediately, his face cleared and he stopped stuttering as ‘not allowed to form an opinion about this’ overrode ‘I think Lup wants my opinion.’

“Is that what you’ve decided?” he asked. She set her textbook down, dissipated the arcane eye, and nodded.

“All I was waiting on was your say-so. You’re fine with it, decision’s made, I’m not changing my mind.” She could see his face melt from detached indifference back to an irrepressible grin. He put down his textbook and squished her cheeks.

“We’re going to _space_ , Lup! We’re going to space!” He got off the bed and jumped, doing a quick pace around the room before tackling her in a hug.

Yeah, maybe they had to take some crazy all-nighters and do some seriously ethically questionable magic to get here, but this—Taako being excited for something, Taako being allowed to be excited for something, a chance to make new discoveries and maybe some day soon figure out how to cut Taako off from his service once and for all—this was worth it.

Lup looked over her notes on conjuration and the possibilities of completely dissolving a link between a sentient being and its maker, with question marks where her source had gotten suspicious and refused to talk any more until Lup could swear under oath that her interest was purely academic. Maybe a charm spell would encourage her to elaborate some more? But how to keep her from telling anyone about it?

She looked back at her brother, crowing ridiculously about going to space in a way he never would have been able to even two or three years ago. They’d gotten to the end of this world’s knowledge and it hadn’t been enough to free him completely. A trip to the ends of the universe could teach them what they needed to know, and access to a bond engine would give them the power to try things that had been impossible before.

She remembered not even a year ago when Taako had crippled himself for weeks just trying to tell her he wanted to have free will some day. She remembered five minutes ago as Taako wavered between disappointment and not being allowed hope. She thought about a future where her brother could tell her what he wanted outright and they could both fight to get it.

Yeah, fuck this planet. They were going to space.

* * *

  _I just need to survive a month. I just need to survive until the end of the year. I can cooperate, I can be good. I need them to keep me alive until the cycle resets and Lup will have me, Lup will steal me back, I can, I can. I can be fixed. I can be good. I can be good until Lup comes back for me._

Another piece was torn from him, but they couldn’t get at his soul. He wouldn’t let them take his sister’s best gift to him. She was his sister, she _was_. They couldn't take that from him.

_Lup, please come back for me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sounds like Taako's having a grand old time! Lup's gonna kick someone's ass over this...probably mine. Lup and Taako both critically failed their checks this chapter, Taako to investigate what Lup was up to and Lup to prevent him from doing that.
> 
> Once this fic is done, I'm not 100% sure what to work on next--I'd like to know what you guys are into, since you've been so supportive of my efforts so far. Here's some ideas I've been working on, let me know what you like!
> 
> -Sequel to this fic. The cat's out of the bag and everyone has to deal with the consequences of that, as well as try to get Taako some free will. Family bonding, some awkwardness, Lup gets protective.  
> -Prequel to this fic. Things that didn't make sense before but now they're easier to understand.  
> -Oneshots in this universe. Davenport kicks some ass, Barry and Taako have an awkward conversation about the nature of life and sentience and free will, Magnus doesn't know much about magic but he does know his best friend, Lup and Taako over the years, the decision to make the relics in this 'verse, that kind of thing.  
> -Continue my Taako took the chalice AU.  
> -A DIFFERENT time-travel AU with more Kravitz and your very very good friend Angus McDonald (also Taako, you can assume Taako is in all of these) and some more mystery shenanigans.  
> -Something else! Revenant AU, unrelated oneshots, some ideas that came out of this fic--hit me! Let me know what you want to see!
> 
> I'll try to get the next part out quick!


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The year starts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are! Here we are with some good good kids!
> 
> This one fought me like hell, I hope you like it!

Lucretia had never been so relieved to see the end of a cycle. The light of the bond engine returning her to her recorded state was a blissful relief compared to the repressive force of the twins’ absence over the past two weeks. As soon as her vision cleared she looked to them.

Well. She looked to Lup, and the glowing outline where Taako was still appearing. They’d allowed his body to finish dissolving before the end of the cycle because they’d been concerned that having two Taako bodies could interfere with their reincarnation and also because having a dead body around was depressing. But maybe they hadn’t done that quick enough, because Taako was taking an awfully long time to form. Lup blinked her eyes clear and turned to the glowing form of her twin.

“Taako?” She said. She took his other ‘hand’ and Lucretia couldn’t see her face, but her ears were dipped back. “Taako, come back. Taako it’s time to come back.”

The bond engine was whining audibly and Lup’s free hand fluttered over the shape’s shoulders, the hand that always held Taako’s still exactly where it had manifested. “Taako!”

Davenport was hitting controls frantically. “I don’t know what you two are doing but it’s putting a hell of a strain on the engine, quit it!”

The ship pitched but Taako still wasn’t forming right. Lucretia took half a step back even as Magnus put his hand through the Taako-figure, only to be immediately blasted back by Lup.

“Don’t you touch him! Taako this is a goddamn order I need you to come back _now_!” And just like that, there he was. Lucretia helped Magnus up from where he’d hit the deck next to her. The bond engine went back to its usual quiet hum and Davenport stopped struggling against the controls. There was a moment of silence as Taako blinked and acclimated, but he saw his sister and smiled.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes, Lulu. Honestly, got to thinking I wouldn’t see you again.” He clung to her hand and combed his fingers through her hair. “I’m here.”

Lup was gripping back just as hard, pulling her brother into a hug. “What the fuck was that? I leave you alone for a damn month and you freak out on me. Fuck, it’s good to see you.”

“Sorry, Lup.” Taako slumped into her. “Fuck.”

Something wasn’t right. Next to Lucretia Magnus jolted forward, but she put a hand on his arm. Something sparkling landed on Lup’s shoulder. Taako fisted a hand in her jacket and coughed hard.

“Taako? Lup? Are you alright?” Davenport had deemed the ship safe enough for now, apparently, and turned his chair to look at the twins. Lup crumpled like she’d been hit and Taako held her up.

“What happened to you? I’m here now, it’s okay, what did they do to you?” Lup ignored the captain and ran her hands up and down her brother’s back, through his hair, bending his head this way and that like she was looking for injuries. Taako allowed it for a moment before stopping her.

“Not as bad as it could be,” he said. He seemed to be having trouble breathing. Lucretia was pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to hold Magnus back much longer without some magical intervention. “Just—hurts. For now. Stuck.”

Taako gave in to a coughing fit and—something came out of him. Like glitter, if glitter were a gas and came out of people. There was some sort of energy clinging to it, glowing like white fire before getting sucked up into Lup. Barry gasped, but Lucretia didn’t recognize it. Something magical, probably? Maybe? The glitter seemed to be, maybe not the other stuff? Magnus was struggling to go to Taako but Lucretia kept herself between him and the twins, just in case. Lup looked liable to hurt someone.

“Is that your _fucking soul_?” Barry blurted. The twins whipped around to face him, leaning heavily on one another but glaring defensively, but Taako was only getting worse off. He started coughing, worse this time, and stuff kept coming out of him. It was only the white energy this time, and it went straight to Lup. Lucretia held up her hands in a pacifying gesture.

“Technically—not—” Taako wheezed. “Now it’s—fuck.”

Lup cradled him at her side and glared like a cornered alley cat. “Don’t worry about it, bro, shh. What did you chucklefucks do to him?”

Barry stepped forward and Lucretia could see his hands shake.

“What did _we_ do to him? What the hell did _you_ do to him? Lup, tell me this isn’t what it looks like,” he pleaded. Lup snarled and made an aborted lunge forward, stopped by the dead weight of her brother. Taako put his hand on her face. He wasn’t looking any better.

“Lup. They didn’t—Lup it wasn’t their—wait,” he wheezed. It was the glitter this time, a cloud of it puffing out and clinging to the arm of his robe. Lup stopped her warpath for a moment, ignoring Barry altogether to drop to her knees with her brother. Her hands starting glowing with that same white light as she leaned him against her and held on—it almost looked like it was flowing from her into him.

That would be crazy, though. That level of soul magic would just be…that was just an insane idea altogether. Magnus was saying something but Lucretia didn’t hear it, caught up in the idea—that kind of magic was incredibly illegal, but if Taako was this messed up when Lup died, maybe? She needed more information. Lup was yelling, demanding, whipping around to glare at Magnus as he approached and drawing her wand when Barry took a step forward.

“Stop!” Davenport’s voice cut through the chaos. “Magnus, Barry, give them space. Lup, put that _away_. Merle, can you see what you can do for Taako?”

Merle didn’t look too certain of his chances, and Lup didn’t look inclined to listen, but Taako muttered something and she set her wand on the floor, still in easy reach.

“Nothin’ Merle can do,” she said. “I can help but I need to know. What happened to my brother.”

Taako’s breathing cleared up for a moment. “Is that what you need?” He asked.

Lup nodded. “Yeah. You got anything?”

“They tried to fix me. Didn’t go so well.” Well—yes, Merle had tried to heal him once he’d collapsed—could that have possibly done this to him? Lup didn’t seem to think so, her rage was being drawn back inward with every breath.

“Who.”

Taako moved a hand. “You know. Them. The people who fix me.” He was looking hard at his sister, but he seemed to be recovering, at least for now.

Lup seemed maybe three seconds away from violence, which might have been the calmest she’d been since the cycle started. “No, Taako, I don’t know. What the hell is going on?”

Taako glared and tried to sit up on his own. This time Lup let Magnus approach and help steady him, though a warning glare told the rest of them not to try anything. And here Lucretia thought they’d been getting along.

“They FIXED ME, Lup, I am now FIXED, I am HOW I AM SUPPOSED TO BE.” Lup seemed to get something from that but saying it had cost Taako his brief recovery, as he wheezed out more glitter followed by more white energy. The white energy continued to Lup and the glitter condensed on Magnus’s shirt. Lucretia had the inane thought that she hoped it was easier to wash out than real glitter. Merle was circling slowly behind Lup.

“Fuck fuck fuck. Fuck okay how can I help you? This is—it’s never hurt you before like this, what’s going on?” Lup set her hands, still glowing, on Taako’s chest, but he pushed them off with a cry of pain. Magnus looked devastated, bundling him up and flinching away. Lup didn’t let him get far.

Taako stopped coughing, but the energy Lup had been using seemed to come back to her tenfold from him. “I don’t need help. I’ve been fixed. I’m better now.”

He coughed again and it was glitter this time. “Fuck. Sorry.”

Lup glared up at Magnus. “Give him back. I need to help my brother.” She made as if to take him, and maybe it was the surprise that did it but she was holding her brother’s weight and hoisting herself to her feet before Merle intervened.

“Hey, Lup, why don’t you sit down for a minute and we can fix this,” he said in a soothing voice, patting her hip and muttering an incantation that was quickly shut down by Lup kicking his bible away.

“Don’t!” She shouted. “Look just—please. I’ll explain everything, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, let me help him. Please, he’s hurt and I can help him, please.”

She backed away as she spoke, stumbling as she tried to hold her brother’s weight as well as her own and running directly into Magnus getting to his feet behind her. She jumped like she’d been shot, startling a groan out of Taako, who looked more out of it than in it at this point but perked up nonetheless at his sister’s distress. He made a motion with his hands like she was trying to grab for something, but nothing happened.

Davenport looked intently at the scene, Lup’s desperation and Taako’s rattling breaths and the rest of the crew, lost in this new situation. Barry had sat down at some point and was just staring at Taako, horrified.

“What are you going to do?” He asked finally.

Lup shook her head. “I don’t know, I don’t know what’s wrong. This has never happened before,” she said.

“Just gotta wreck shit,” Taako muttered. “Unfix me. Fuckin’ kick my ass, Lup. Never been as useless as after I met you.”

Lup looked strained but didn’t respond past rubbing her brother’s arm. “I just need to stop whatever’s hurting him right now. Once I do I promise, I swear on my life I’ll explain everything, please Davenport. He’s my brother.”

“’N if we wait too long I’m not gonna make it,” Taako offered. He smiled woozily at Barry. Coughed. “Death boy gets it.”

Lup clung to him and he clung back just as hard. Davenport came to a decision.

“Yeah, we’ll help you. What do you need from us? Can Barry help somehow?” As Davenport spoke, Magnus heaved a sigh of relief and picked up both twins, barely avoiding a vicious kick from Lup and doing nothing about Taako’s weak struggles.

Lup adjusted quickly to her position. “Taako, stop fighting. I need you to go to sleep for a bit.  Magnus, put me down, I have what I need in my room. I can handle this.”

A burst of white energy streaked from Taako to Lup as he went limp and she shook her head. “Fine. Magnus, you can come with. Lucretia I’m gonna need the best damn ward of your life, this shit’s gonna get crazy. Merle, get as far away from my room as you can and stay there, the last thing we need is godly attention. Barry—” Lup pinned Barry with a terrifying look, and Lucretia spared a moment to feel bad. That relationship would need some patching up. “—I don’t know what you must think right now, but don’t you touch my brother.”

Barry narrowed his eyes, but held his hands up placatingly. “I won’t do anything until Taako’s _awake_ and _capable of consent_ ,” he said pointedly. Lup ignored him to brush out of the room, and Lucretia could only follow.

* * *

 

As soon as the others were gone, Davenport turned to Barry and Merle. “Right. What have you got?”

Merle looked to Barry, but, fuck. What Barry had was a goddamned mess that implicated at least one person he loved in some seriously evil fuckery. Barry would like to not have anything, at this point.

Davenport looked at him and he slumped. “I’ve got theories,” he offered, “nothing good and not enough information to prove anything, but—Gods, there’s a hundred things it could be and none of them paints a pretty picture.” Davenport nodded and grabbed Lucretia’s scratch notebook from the shelf next to the helm.

“Let’s go over what we know, then. Concrete facts and then we can brainstorm.”

Footsteps sounded in the hall as Magnus approached. “Barry, can you come for a second? Lucretia said there was something she wanted you to see? But, hurry. Lup’s pretty pissed and Taako got a big spear thing.”

Fuck. Big spear thing? “Yeah, on my way.”

Magnus stayed with Davenport and Merle as Barry jogged down the hall to the twins’ rooms—he wasn’t especially sure which was technically whose, but there was noise coming from one and not the other and he opened the door.

Taako had stopped leaking his immortal soul all over the place, which was fantastic, but he was staring at Lup in a way that reminded Barry of his first attempt at a construct, which was just, that was a bad look and a bad metaphor and Barry was going to stop thinking about it just as soon as he fixed this.

Lup was shuffling through notes with diagrams and arcane symbols and sigils interwoven in some pretty damn suspicious patterns.

“Lup, what the fuck,” Barry said. Lucretia looked relieved to see him, but she barely registered compared to someone Barry had really, truly respected elbow deep in magic that could only really be used for some pretty evil shit.

“Lup, does Taako even know what you’re doing? You can’t just—you’re not just _experimenting_ on your _brother_ ,” he tried again. She ignored him, flipping through pages and pages of the kind of magic people didn’t even joke about because it was, again, _fucking evil_. He looked at Taako but he couldn’t see any spark in his eyes, warmth and personality replaced with cold intelligence. Fuck, shit. Lup wouldn’t have had time to do something he couldn’t undo, would she?

“Hey, Taako, want me to do magic on your soul?” Lup asked, ripping a page out from a glittery, purple journal, which had seemed so disarming before.

“If that’s what you think is best,” Taako said blandly, and then shook himself. “Lup? What are you—Barry?”

Barry remembered the last time Taako had called for his sister and then for Barry. He put a hand on Taako’s shoulder. His face had already glazed over, though.

“Lup, this is fucked up. You have to see that this is wrong,” Barry insisted. Lucretia twisted her fingers around her wand and Lup paused her work for a moment to glare.

“Fuck off. Lucretia, put up the ward if you don’t want your shit getting wrecked.” She grabbed an old Tupperware full of some sort of gray powder and another of off-white.

Fuck. Barry couldn’t just allow this to happen—Taako had asked for his help before he died; the last time he’d seen Taako completely lucid Taako had trusted him to do something. He tugged Taako’s shoulder to him and Lup pinned him with a poisonous glare.

“Barry—” Lucretia looked uncertain. And then Taako turned to him and everything else faded for just a moment and—

Barry didn’t move, and nothing moved around him. He didn’t change position or location, but he was in the cockpit with Davenport, Merle, and Magnus; and Taako, Lup, and Lucretia were no longer present.

 _“Lup doesn’t want you here,”_ he heard as he settled.

Fuck. That didn’t point to good things. There was a shudder and then nothing—Lucretia must have put up a ward.

“Barry? How long have you been there?” Magnus squinted. Barry shrugged.

“Hard to say. A moment ago I hadn’t been,” he said absentmindedly, mind buzzing. What could shift a humanoid’s location so fundamentally that they didn’t perceive a change? If Taako had been more with it, would he have noticed at all? Could Taako usually do that, or was it contingent on Lup? What would that mean?

Davenport watched him thoughtfully and Barry brought himself back to the present. Right. Whatever Lup was doing— _whatever_ Lup was doing, they needed to figure it out before they could fix it without hurting anyone. For that they’d need to talk to Taako, probably. Lup hadn’t seemed too forthcoming with information.

“What we know so far,” Davenport said. “Lup died. Taako was affected at the same time and appeared to die. He knew something was going to happen before it did. Taako’s apparent body began to evaporate, giving off energy consistent with the bond engine immediately after the event and the Light of Creation later on. The planar system we were in would have motive to kill Taako and definitely did kill Lup. Lup claims not to know exactly what happened in the interim, but Taako seems to have a pretty good idea. Taako was difficult for the bond engine to render at the start of this cycle, and he seemed to be emitting two types of energy—the same as what his body was emitting before or different?”

Barry could answer this one. “Different. The glittery stuff I don’t recognize, but the white stuff was a soul. Lup’s notes had some pretty serious soul-binding magic involved—real bad stuff. Mind control, binding, extraplanar entities, some things that wouldn’t be out of place in a fae’s contract. Taako didn’t seem too strong on the ‘free will’ bit when I saw him, but I suspect he has some sort of extraplanar connection that he used to transport me out once it became clear I wasn’t cooperating.”

“Can’t he just do that with magic?” Magnus asked.

Barry shrugged. “Sure, he could get the same result, but I’m pretty sure that wasn’t part of an arcane tradition. That was some pretty serious planar manipulation that mortals from our world haven’t mastered. Either he had a hell of a teacher…”

He left the rest to imagination. Davenport looked grim. “Let’s move on to theories, then. Barry, what are you thinking?”

Barry shrugged. “Could be a lot of things. At one point I was thinking Taako was just born without a soul and Lup linked theirs together, which would explain the snapback when Lup died…it would give Lup some conceivable control, which would explain some things, but not the body…then I thought there were some things that were a little too familiar about Taako’s body. It could be that Taako’s some sort of…undead something? The result of a magical accident could destroy a body, and if Lup had managed to seal Taako’s soul to something else before he could move on they could have made a construct afterwards that would have done it. Alternately, if Taako was an extraplanar entity of some sort, that would explain what he just did, but Lup would have had to perform a hell of a binding to keep him around. It could be almost anything.”

“My thought was some kind of familiar,” said Lucretia’s voice from the doorway. “I’ll be mostly working on the ward, whatever Lup’s doing in there is massively destructive. But I was thinking summons. ‘d explain things.”

She came to sit beside Magnus, who shuffled to make room.

“Can a summons have a soul?” he asked.

Lucretia shrugged.

“Not a soul of its own, but Lup could have shared hers,” Davenport said. “Merle? You have anything?”

Merle shifted. “Could be some sort of guardian spirit, ‘s not unusual for a family to have some sort of immortal take interest and keep an eye on them. Could just be that the reintegration kicked Taako’s ass in a major way and Lup has a weird thing with soul magic.”

“So we have jack squat?” Magnus said.

Merle grunted. “Yeah.”

Barry wrung his hands in his lap. There were still too many options and nothing was getting solved.

“Is everything in the barrier still going on? Do you know how long it’ll take?” He asked Lucretia.

Lucretia thought for a moment. “Still going strong. Lup said it would be a few hours at least. Taako wasn’t talking much when I left.”

Couldn’t mean anything good.

“Once they get out of there we’re gonna do something, right? If Lup is keeping Taako bound to her somehow, we have to let him go. That’s some seriously shady shit,” he said. “Not to mention the implications of _mind control_.”

Davenport gestured with a hand. “We don’t know anything yet. We shouldn’t accuse either of them of anything definitively until they’ve had a chance to explain themselves. This meeting is just to try to consolidate what we know. Is there anything else we should know?”

Barry, excuse his moral sensibilities, was still stuck on the mind control. Lucretia and Merle shook their heads, and Magnus said, “I haven’t known what’s going on in like a month.”

“Then take a couple hours and I’ll call you when Lup and Taako come out. We don’t know what it’s gonna be like when they do, so we’re all gonna need to be in top form. We’re not fighting within the crew unless we absolutely need to—that means you, Barry.” Davenport sounded like he could barely believe what he was saying and Barry couldn’t blame him. Two months ago he never would have been able to imagine fighting with Lup, but now…he didn’t know what to think anymore. He nodded.

Davenport continued. “Right. Take a nap, blow something up, meditate, do what you need to to get ready for a hard conversation. Do not interfere with the twins’ rooms. Once they get done with what they’re doing we’ll reevaluate and figure out what’s going on here.”

Barry didn’t say anything as he got up to leave. Magnus followed him as he went to the rec room, but he’d already made his peace with waiting. Once they got out of there, he could try to reverse whatever was being done with Taako. In the meantime, some tense movie-watching wasn’t gonna help, but Magnus didn’t deal well with helplessness and something to keep them distracted wouldn’t hurt.

Barry glanced down the hallway to the glow of Lucretia’s ward over Lup’s door.

_Hang in there, Taako. Whatever’s going on, we’ll figure something out._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things look pretty bad right now, but don't worry. All will be well!
> 
> Barry will calm down in a bit. I imagine working in a field like necromancy would make him pretty sensitive to unethical uses of magic, and someone he really respects using 'evil' magic would definitely be a big problem for him, especially so soon after he was skirting the ethical limit. He does love Lup, he wouldn't be so disappointed if he didn't, and once they figure out they're on the same side they'll have to have some important conversations about that, but right now he's hurt and grieving and not really ready to think straight.
> 
> All the theories thrown around were things people sent in in comments. You all have had some kickass ideas! As always, please let me know how you're liking it, and if you have preferences for what you wanna read next let me know!


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taako wakes up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The real question: will this fic ever actually end? Apparently not? This chapter wasn't even supposed to exist but Taako wanted to say his piece. Here's the Taako take on the situation.

Taako woke up in his sister’s room on the Starblaster with something like the mother of all headaches, but in his chest.

That’s right, she’d gotten him out, hadn’t she? He really hadn’t thought he was going to make it. Lup had been lax with him for so long, he’d forgotten how hard it was to follow the rules.

His weapon was in his hand and he was slumped over his sister facing the door. He hoped idly that he hadn’t hurt anyone, and felt a brief warmth at being able to hope without Lup telling him to. She’d fixed him.

Well, depending on who you asked, she’d unfixed him. He managed a weak chuckle.

“You’re awake,” said a gruff voice behind him, and he scrambled to his feet, weapon in hand and pointed aggressively at the source.

Merle was on his sister’s bed, eyeing him closely.

Huh.

He lowered his weapon. He glanced down at Lup, but she was out cold on the floor. Magical exhaustion, he would lend her a bit of their soul to help her recover if he wasn’t pretty sure she’d wanted him to hold onto it for a while. He’d been in and out, it was hard to remember for sure. Best to wait and see as long as nothing came up.

He looked back at Merle, uncertain. He really didn’t have any protocol for this situation.

“Popcorn?” Merle offered. There were about four bags of fantasy microwave popcorn on the bed with him. He was holding a fifth one out. Taako reached for it, uncertain.

It wasn’t taken away.

Taako touched it.

Still there.

Taako squinted at Merle and snatched it out of his hand.

It stayed solid.

It had been…a while since he’d eaten. But he needed his hands to eat. Or he could use mage hand but then he would need to use his magic.

He watched Merle from the corner of his eye, glanced at his weapon, glanced at the popcorn. Glanced at his sister, but she was no help.

It was burnt. Everyone always burnt it, they were a bunch of barbarians who couldn’t handle a simple popcorn bag.

Or he thought it was burnt, because that was what he would expect if he were really on the Starblaster, because they were trying to teach him to be better. To not let his guard down just because of a friendly face.

One way to find out.

Taako put the popcorn bag carefully on his sister’s chest. It rose and fell with her breathing. He held a hand out and concentrated to manifest his soul in it.

There, a tiny, powerful ball of flickering fire. It pointed, as always, towards Lup. He held it out to Merle.

“Here.” He watched, trying to keep his face expressionless. If this was an illusion they wouldn’t be looking for his feelings anyway—they wouldn’t think he had any. He couldn’t be too careful, though. Their wisdom was infinite.

Merle looked back at him with his blank, beady old man eyes. He wasn’t completely still—not Merle’s style—but he didn’t lunge for it. Instead, he waited a moment, and when Taako didn’t take it back he slowly stretched his arm out.

Taako watched, carefully not tensing. His weapon hand tightened and he leaned on the staff of it, trying for subtle. Merle paused, arm halfway outstretched.

Taako froze in place, watching.

Merle began to move again. Taako could feel the warmth off his hand and for a crazy moment he didn’t want to move. Just wanted to let this fake Merle rip his soul out and be done with it. Just wanted this to be over.

The moment of hesitation was all Merle needed to wrap his hand around Taako’s fingers and close them around his soul.

“You can keep a hold of that, I think,” Merle said, utterly ignoring four razor-sharp points hovering half a breath from his throat. Taako didn’t even remember moving his weapon. Training must really be kicking in.

Taako stared for a second. Merle pushed his hand gently and crossed his arms. If he were going to lunge, he’d sure picked a bad position to start from. He wasn’t even dealing with Taako’s weapon.

Taako’s soul was glowing through his fingertips. He couldn’t actually hold it in this form—no way was he going to manifest it thoroughly enough that it could be so easily stolen, not when he still wasn’t certain, but it followed his hand because that was where he was channeling it and he brought it to his chest. Cradled it. His sister’s best gift to him.

He put it back where it belonged and Merle didn’t move to stop him, didn’t tell him he didn’t need a soul and shouldn’t have one, didn’t punish him for stealing from his charge.

He retracted his weapon, leaning it protectively over Lup; dropped into a crouch and tore into the popcorn bag.

Gods, it had been so long since he’d eaten.

Merle—and it had to be the real Merle, didn’t it? His sister had gotten him _out_ —tapped the intercom near the bed.

“Taako’s awake,” he said. “Lup’s still out, though.”

Captain Davenport’s voice came through the speaker and Taako had never been so glad to hear the voice of authority.

“Good. Taako, are you doing alright? You ready to talk to us?” He said, and Taako stopped eating for half a second, shrugged, and kept eating. Merle could interpret, he had more important things to do with his mouth.

“He says he needs a minute to reestablish his delicate constitution,” Merle said.

“Fuck you, old man,” Taako returned, getting popcorn bits everywhere. Gross.

“Well, Magnus is gonna knock down the door if we make him wait any longer, and I think Lucretia’s just run out of patience to stop him. You good for a visit?” Davenport asked. Merle raised an eyebrow.

Was he good for a visit? Lup wasn’t awake. He prodded her shoulder with his foot.

Nothing.

He looked at Merle.

He looked back at Lup.

Being a person was hard. He was pretty sure the buzzing in his head meant he’d lost a lot of progress with it. He wished Lup was awake.

Magnus was…a threat, definitely. He was definitely supposed to think of Magnus as a threat. But Lup liked him, too? And Taako liked him. When Taako was up to things like liking people and also forming interpersonal connections, he liked Magnus. He’d written it down somewhere, he was pretty sure, in case he forgot. Would Lup be okay with Merle if he went to go get his list of people that are okay?

“Give ‘im a minute, he’s thinking,” Merle said to the intercom. Taako glared. He wasn’t _slow_. “Just kidding, he’s fine, yeah, send in the circus.”

Merle was an _asshole_.

And then Taako had to abandon his popcorn in favor of holding his weapon in both hands and glaring suspiciously at the door as it opened. He felt like a little kid again, barely able to finish one thing before he had to assess the threat level of another. He really had gone soft with Lup.

Magnus looked like he’d been ready to barrel down the door and sweep Taako into a hug, which, after the month Taako had just had, no. Luckily, he was dissuaded by a massive fucking trident in his face and gently encouraged to remain past arm’s length as he inched towards the bed, hands up. Barry had stopped in the doorway and was holding stock still, staring at Taako. Lucretia was hovering behind him. He couldn’t see any clear weapons on any of them.

“I have just had the month from _hell_ ,” Taako said. “And I’m still only like eighty percent sure this is real. So I’m gonna need a few questions answered before we get to what the hell happened back there.”

Magnus sat innocently on the bed, hands still up. “Is it okay if I make you an origami duck?”

Well. It was hard to threaten a guy who’d just offered you a paper duck. Taako rose from his crouch using the butt of his weapon as a cane and brushed himself off. It felt weird to be above Lup. “Taako’s accepting gifts from all comers. Happy birthday to me.”

Barry decided it was safe to approach and took a step towards Taako, which, nope. Taako swept his weapon in Barry’s direction and whiffed right by. Barry got the message and backed up.

“Is it, uh, is it okay if we ask you a few questions in return? Nothing bad,” he suggested. “We don’t have much until Davenport gets here, anyway, just a couple things we want to know.”

He didn’t move as he spoke, which earned him some brownie points. Also Lup had a crush the size of the moon on the guy, she’d probably be pretty upset if Taako cut his nose off. If he stopped asking for information, Barold was in danger of becoming Taako’s favorite. He nodded hesitantly.

“There’s a lotta shit I can’t say,” he warned. “More that I’m not supposed to. You’re better off waiting until Lup wakes up if you want answers.”

Barry frowned but didn’t protest, so Taako continued. “I want food, too. Time works funny, it’s been a long-ass time since I’ve had a real meal. One of you chucklefucks better have something on you.”

“We can always move this to the kitchen,” Lucretia suggested in a voice that said she knew exactly how likely that was to happen.

“Fuck no. I’m staying right here until Lup wakes up and kicks my ass.” She would, too. For not telling her what would happen if she died, for letting himself get so messed up, for the jolt of terror he’d felt soul-deep when she regenerated and discovered that he hadn’t. If nothing else, she’d be pissed about how much he’d torn himself up trying to stay conscious after she’d called him back to her. That was gonna take a while to recover from.

“I have a sandwich,” Magnus offered, which, how the hell did he know to bring a sandwich. There it was, though. Egg salad, looked like. Taako reached forward confidently and pretended not to be startled when it remained solid. No one was going to try to take his food from him. Feeding him was a necessary expense.

He glanced at his sister, still out cold. She’d want food when she woke up too. He set it on her chest and hoped she didn’t roll around any. He kind of wanted to move her to a more comfortable position, now that his soul was settled firmly in his chest and filling him with warm fuzzies. It wasn’t supposed to matter to him whether she was comfortable or not. He was just supposed to keep her functional.

Well, moving her would take both hands, anyway. Or magic. He wasn’t quite prepared to do either yet. He settled back down by her side.

“Are you, uh, gonna eat that, buddy?” Magnus asked, staring at the sandwich sitting on his sister. Was it poisoned? Taako unwrapped it and took a bite.

By every god that ever was, egg salad had never tasted so good. If Taako had been anyone else, he wouldn’t have been able to resist eating the rest. As it was, he couldn’t help relaxing for half a second, making the tiniest sound as he chewed. Fucking egg salad. Delicious.

Through his programming more than any sort of act of will, he managed to wrap the sandwich back up and give it back to Lup. He savored his bite and did not immediately drop dead. Which, of course he didn’t, Magnus wouldn’t fuckin’ poison him. If he really wanted, he’d go the direct route. Fuck, this was heaven.

He didn’t get to savor it for long before the door opened again and he had to get back on his guard, but it was just Davenport. He barely bothered waving his weapon around before sitting back down next to Lup. Davenport was sharp, he wouldn’t get too close. He joined the contingent on the bed, where Lucretia and Barry had also filtered. Taako felt his ears dip back, which was normally a bad thing, but this time it felt okay. Happy, but calmer? All his people were in one place, at least. That was nice. He decided to celebrate with unusual graciousness.

“So? Q&A time. Hit me.” He couldn’t bring himself to sprawl—too hard to get back to standing, too defenseless—but he managed to give an impression of slouching that he thought was pretty good considering where he’d been. “We can do a whole exchange thing, it’ll be cute. Question for question.”

Barry started to say something, then stopped. Thought for a bit. The others let him say his piece.

“Let me clarify,” he said. “We ask one question and you may or may not answer, and then you ask one question that we have to answer honestly.”

He wasn’t phrasing it as a question or a request—clever. Unnecessary, but clever.

“Just a conversation between friends, Barold. No need to be so tense.” Barry looked unconvinced. “Look, I’m not a goddamned fae, I’m not gonna screw you over for semantics. There are rules I’ve—just kidding, okay, not talking about that too deep. Let’s just say there’s stuff I won’t do, but if it’s allowed it’s fair game. You guys are free here.”

Davenport steepled his fingers, which would be more imposing if he wasn’t being swallowed by Lup’s fluffy comforter. “In that case—is Lup beholden to the same restrictions as you are?”

Good one. Taako wasn’t restricted from talking about Lup. “Nope. How did Lup get me back?”

“You came back at the start of the cycle,” Barry said. He seemed to be taking the lead on this—what did he know? Had he seen their notes? Had he done something while Taako was out?

No, that was ridiculous. Barry was good people. Maybe Lup told him something?

Regardless. Start of the cycle? He must have lost more time than he’d thought. He could have sworn he still had a bit still to go. At least that meant Lup hadn’t picked a fight with his bosses.

Magnus was looking at him funny. Taako felt cool metal as his hand went to his weapon instinctively. “What?” he snapped.

Magnus gestured to Lup. “Did you not like it?”

Taako looked down. Right. The sandwich. Still there. “It’s a sandwich.”

Something came at him and he speared it without thinking. Popcorn got all over him. Fuck, now his weapon would be all buttery. He flinched despite himself when a couple kernels hit Lup.

He considered the bag. He looked at Merle, who had thrown it at him. He still had three more bags, but Taako was pretty sure at least one of them was empty.

Fantasy microwaved popcorn was probably not great for magical exhaustion, right? Taako should eat it so Lup didn’t. That was just logic. He shot Merle a look in case he was getting ideas, but delicately un-speared the bag and popped some into his mouth. Delicious fake butter.

“I’m counting that as a question,” he warned them, because fuck these guys and their sad, understanding faces. He bet they hadn’t expected him to eat anything until Lup did. Take that, fuckers.

What else did he want to know? If Lup hadn’t interfered directly and the cycles were what had brought him back, that pretty much explained all he needed to know.

“Wait, Lup did die, right? That’s what started all this,” he tried. Lucretia flipped through one of her journals.

“Yeah, she did,” Magnus said. “Sorry.”

Taako shrugged. He’d have more feelings about that later when he could comprehend the idea a world continuing without Lup. “’S cool. She got better.”

“Are you in trouble right now?” Barry asked, which. Way to be broad about it. Taako crunched some popcorn and thought.

“Yeah, probably. If Lup dies again I’m pretty sure that’s it for me. Say your goodbyes, Taako Train’s at its last stop.” Last he remembered his bosses had been just about ready to give up on fixing him and prepping up for something more like recycling.

His soul shuddered in his chest at the thought and Lup groaned. He smoothed a hand over her hair. He didn’t think about what would happen to Lup’s best gift to him if he’d been over there any longer.

He was being stared at. Even Lucretia had stopped paging through her journal to give him the sad cow eyes. He waved his hands. He hated this part.

“Whoa, whoa, cool it with the long faces! It’s not so bad. What would I do without Lup anyway, follow you chucklefucks around? I don’t think so, kemosabe. Taako’s got a brand to maintain, I only stalk successful, high-power individuals, ain’t got time to watch some fantasy scientists look for a nightlight forever,” he kept talking until Barry’s face went from devastated to thoughtful. Gods, anything was better than the ‘you have no soul’ face. Davenport and Lucretia seemed to follow suit with admirable scientific spirit, but Magnus was frowning and Merle was looking right through him.

Fuck, that was gonna be a problem some time. Maybe Lup would deal with it? He crunched down the last of his popcorn and eyed the kernels that had spilled on the floor.

“Why do you follow Lup?” Barry asked. Taako stared.

“‘cause she’s…my sister? I live with her? Hey, why do you follow the Starblaster around?” Barry scowled but Taako didn’t let up. It was a dumb question.

“No, why did—how _long_ have you been with Lup?” Barry tried. Taako raised an eyebrow.

“Well, Barold, when a momma elf and a daddy elf love each other very much…” There was an awkward pause as he trailed off. Honestly, he’d expected an interruption. “Do you guys actually need me to explain what twins are? This is our world’s best and brightest?”

“Is that what you are? Twins?” Well fuck, there was a question. Fortunately, programming and Lup worked together on this point.

“I’m Lup’s twin brother. We were born together. You know this,” Taako said. Barry continued to look dubious, but it wasn’t his turn for a question anyway, so Taako felt no guilt cutting him off.

“Did you see what exactly Lup did while I was out? She should have left hella notes somewhere.” Lup was always crazy meticulous recording what they tried on Taako in case their theory was wrong somehow. He was designed for replacement more than for modification and Lup freaked out at the possibility of something going wrong that she couldn’t track down.

Barry looked grave. “So you do have an idea of what she was doing?”

“Hey, not your turn. I gave you a freebie last time but you’ve gotta answer mine.” Taako reminded him. He’d finished collecting all of the floor popcorn into a little pile in the shredded bag. Five second rule?

Barry’s face was hard and Taako considered that his sister may have done something rash while he was out. Barry usually looked at her like she hung the moon, loved doing research with her. He should be all over this shit. Davenport gave Barry a sharp look and he settled, but Taako kept an eye on him. Something to watch out for.

“When we got here there were a few things out, but they burned as soon as we touched them. We think she may have hidden whatever materials she was using.” Davenport told him.

Well damn. Something must have really happened. “The hell did you guys do?”

Barry made a sharp noise through his nose. “What did _she_ do?”

Taako’s hands were on his weapon. Just resting there.

“You got something to say about my sister?” he asked. Fuckin’ Greg Grimauldis all over again. He’d thought these guys were better than that. Could they even run away from this? What happened if they had to fight?

His growing urgency must have reached his sister, or maybe she was just ready to wake up, because he could feel Lup’s part of their soul rousing. He put a hand on her shoulder and kept his eyes on the most present threat.

“Sssh, Lup, I’ve got this. Go back to sleep,” he muttered. He was…reasonably sure he had this. And it wasn’t good for Lup to be throwing magic around so recently after fucking around with their soul.

Barry seemed to realize this wasn’t going to end well. He put his hands out.

“Taako, we’re just trying to help you,” he said.

Huh. Usually people used that line on Lup shortly before trying to kill Taako. He wasn’t sure what it meant in this context; except that his sister was probably not enthused about Barry’s idea of helping, and he probably wouldn’t be, either.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Taako decided. Which was true. Barry had no fucking idea what he was talking about. He just kept looking at the two of them with those sad eyes. Taako scooted closer to Lup. “You gonna tell me anything useful or not?”

Lucretia spoke up. “I was there for part of the setup for the ritual. I might be able to help you with that, although Lup kicked me out before she started.”

Hmm. “Nah. She’ll tell me herself once she wakes up, getting it secondhand will just muddy it up.”

The peanut gallery looked concerned.

“Are you sure she will?” asked Barry, who was still on thin fucking ice and Taako glared at him to prove it. What did he know, anyway. Taako took back Barry being his favorite, Magnus was the only one he liked. Magnus was accumulating a small pile of origami ducks.

“She’s my fuckin’ sister, so yeah, I’d say she’ll probably tell me about her crazy magical adventures,” he said. He hefted his weapon in one hand. Magnus had promised him a duck. He had plenty. Keeping them to himself at this point was just greedy.

Barry looked frustrated. Fine, so was Taako. But Taako has a bigass weapon and Barry was a squishy human, so Barry’s frustration was more helpless than Taako’s tended to be.

Also, when Taako was helpless he wasn’t allowed to be frustrated.

“Taako the kind of magic Lup was attempting was some seriously questionable stuff—at _best_. How do you know she’s doing what you think she’s doing?” He looked like he wanted to rub his hands on his forehead but he was too busy keeping an eye on Taako’s weapon as it slowly reached towards Magnus. Magnus was reaching a finger back like he wanted to poke it. Magnus understood. Taako snared a duck and retrieved his weapon before Magnus could get to it.

“Honestly, if Lup wanted to fuck me over there would be nothing I could do about it. She’d have already done it. The only reason I’m here is because Lup wanted to set me free.” Taako tried not to think about the implications of his words. Talking so positively about what Lup had done to him was a risk after being so close to getting fixed and he felt a sharp tear to prove it. He coughed and something came out. Fuck.

It had been…a while since he’d had to worry about his soul tearing up his metaphysical essence and vice versa. When Lup had figured out that breaking the rules put the two in conflict she’d established hella barriers around each powered with her own magical energy until Taako had been afraid to skirt the edges in case one of them went after her. But when she’d died, yeah, it would make sense that those barriers were gone. Even if they had survived, his bosses would definitely have taken them away—his essence was supposed to scrub out things that weren’t supposed to be there. He couldn’t remember when exactly they’d come down. He’d lost a lot of things visiting home.

The sharp tear through his soul had the fun extra effect of waking Lup up the rest of the way, though. She gasped, sitting up and clutching her chest as the phantom pain went through her. Her sandwich went flying. Taako got an arm around her shoulders.

“Don’t worry about it, it’s cool, we’re safe, I’m here now,” he murmured. She looked at him up and down, checking, but he was unhurt on the outside and she already knew how his soul was doing.

Still, she asked, because Lup was kind.

“You doin’ okay, bro-bro?” She was giving him her ‘be honest’ eyes and Taako barely remembered their audience except that Magnus and Barry had both jolted forward like they wanted to help and everyone else was watching intently enough for Taako to feel it.

Still. Lup had asked for his condition. This was something he could do.

And then he looked her in the eyes and his soul was all in one plane again and she’d saved him and no one was gonna hurt him anymore, not while she was around, and all he could do was stare back like the world was ending. She’d _saved_ him. He was _out_.

“Gonna take a bit to get me in top shape,” he apologized. “They fixed me.”

She looked at him steadily. He smiled.

“It’s good to be home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Our twins are back together, baby! They're unstoppable!
> 
> Any guesses on who Taako's 'bosses' are? Or what his 'job' is?


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Explanations, part 1.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I continue to dodge writing the actual last chapter. This got so long I had to split it AGAIN; explanation of the soul bond is here and explanation of what the fuck Taako is is now NEXT chapter. Hopefully this should explain a couple of recent behaviors, though!

Lup took one moment to watch her brother. The ritual had shown how deeply he’d been torn into, and there was a pain in her chest that said it was still hurting him, but there he was, in front of her and smiling and holding an arm around her like she needed the comfort. Taako could be funny like that. She took one more moment to pull him into a hug, squeeze tightly and smell the wild energy around him while their soul settled in. He didn’t smell like their shampoo any more, but that was okay. He’d get back to normal and so would she.

She could feel her neck touching his shoulder, the precise point where the arrow had gone right though, and shuddered. He squeezed tighter and smoothed a hand down her back. He’d gotten a lot better at hugs since when they were children.

Someone cleared their throat and Lup’s eyes darted to the _entire damn crew_ sitting on her bed. Taako didn’t startle but he did stiffen and she got the feeling his first reaction would have been violence. She didn’t really remember much about what he was like when he’d first come to her because they’d been literal babies, but if he’d gone back to where he was from violence was probably a good sign. Better than vacantly waiting for orders, at least. She let him go before he could get paranoid about all the people at his back.

“You should eat, you’ve been out for…I don’t actually know, how long were we out?” Taako said, leaning over to get a fantasy-plastic-wrapped sandwich from the ground. Ew, how long had that been there? She was starving, though, so she took it and ignored the missing bite. Five second rule.

“Just over a day,” Lucretia said. “Do you need more food? You mentioned you were hungry.”

As if on cue, Taako’s stomach growled and he colored visibly. Lup handed off the sandwich.

She was getting pretty sick of being watched like this, though. She shot a look at the peanut gallery. Barry had a funny look on his face, which she’d half-expected but it still stung. Fuck him anyway for making assumptions.

“I guess you have questions,” she said. She resisted the urge to bundle her brother up and run for the hills. That wouldn’t even work, they were in a space ship. Taako handed the sandwich back after a couple bites. “Kitchen first. I need to eat a damn horse and none of you can be much better if neither of us has been around to cook for you.”

She took a bite of her own to punctuate and climbed to her feet. Wobbled a little. Fuck magical exhaustion. Taako was at her side instantly, hovering just outside of her range of motion like he did when they were kids.

It was then that she noticed the _giant fucking spear thing_. In her defense it had blended in with the general chaos of their room, but. Giant. Spear-y. Definitely a weapon. Being used as a walking stick. She raised an eyebrow at Taako.

“The fuck?” she asked, because seriously, this was not that kind of situation. She didn’t think she’d seen it for…Gods, must have been years, at least. Decades?

He shrugged.

“It’s been a long month,” he said. “Tell you about it later.”

Once the two of them were off the hook for…whatever they were being accused of. Existing. Lup was so sick of people deciding that her brother didn’t deserve to live. She made him go first towards the kitchen, pausing to glare as they passed the others. He stopped to steal something from the pile of origami next to Magnus.

No one stopped them from leaving the room and going to the kitchen, though they did follow in a pack of silently judgmental crewmates. Fuck them anyway. Lup shepherded her brother to a seat at the table and set about rummaging through the cupboards. No more instant pasta but there was some of the normal stuff. Good enough.

Taako held his origami duck and his weapon and watched her. Barry cleared his throat again.

“So. Explaining?” He prompted. Taako raised an eyebrow at her. She raised one back. How much was he comfortable with here?

He shrugged. Fuck, yeah, probably not something he was allowed to decide. Fuck that. She looked over his face for any hint of discomfort.

He turned to Barry. Looked back at her. Shrugged again.

Gods, she felt gross making this decision for him. It was his life! The actual, real parameters around his existence! Didn’t that merit an opinion, some sort of agency, something? Apparently not, though. She huffed out a frustrated sigh and dumped the pasta in the boiling water.

“Yeah, okay. Tell us what you got—wait, do you have anything?” She asked.

“Barry’s closest,” Taako supplied. “Maybe Lucretia, I don’t know what she knows. Mags’s lost, he’s my favorite now.”

He’d probably been giving them hell while she was out. She smirked. Good. “How close?”

A pause. “We doin’ this?” Taako asked.

“Not if you don’t want to,” she assured him. Maybe it was pointless but if, somehow, he managed to not want this and got it across to her, she’d think of something. Somehow.

“I’ve broken a lot of rules for you, Lup, but this one’s really not a decision I can make.” He said. “Like, on so many levels. This is all you.”

Yeah, she’d thought as much. “Yeah, we’re doin’ this. In for a penny.”

He nodded and turned to the crowd. “So I’m not a real person, Lup is, we’re really good at sharing.” He crossed his arms and sat back for the chaos.

“Taako, what the fuck,” Lup said, because honestly, what the fuck.

“I second that?” Magnus added.

“Some more detail would be…appreciated.” Normally Lup would take a moment to enjoy Barry’s sweet strained face, but right now, what the fuck. Taako wasn’t even trying.

Taako shrugged. “You said we were doing this.”

Fuck. “Fuck.”

Yeah, he probably wasn’t really supposed to tell people about this. Hopefully he just needed a start to work off of.

Looked like she’d have to take over for the first part, then. “Okay, so what my brother is trying to say here—”

“Hey, I said it, babe. I didn’t _try_ shit.”

“What Taako was putting badly is that he’s—hmm. He wasn’t always…particularly…fuck, this is hard,” Lup said. How had Taako explained it to her again? Oh, right, terribly. In a way that prompted years of research just to figure out what the fuck he meant.

Taako understood her plight. “Tell me about it,” he said.

Davenport intervened before they could get any more tangled up than they already were. “How about we start off with some things we’re already pretty sure of and you can tell us if we’re right or not?”

Well, it was as good a place to start as any. No way had they gotten even half the truth but it would get the conversation started. Lup nodded and stirred the pasta. Lasagna noodles with butter tonight because she had no desire to make a real meal.

“You might not like what we have to say,” Barry warned, but Lup didn’t like much of what anyone had to say about her brother and it had never stopped her before.

“Try me.” She challenged.

“Fine by me,” Taako added.

“Right.” Barry peeked at Lucretia’s notebook—did they have a little list? That was adorable. “The two of you share at least part of your souls through dark magic.”

“Yeah, that’s fair,” Taako agreed. Barry looked surprised—what, had he been expecting them to deny it?

“Actually, if you wanna get technical, it’s just the one soul. Taako didn’t have one originally but we ran into some trouble and now we share ours.”

Going by Barry’s face, they were definitely off-script now. Good. Lup hated scripts.

“Why? How? Why would you do that to yourselves, how would Taako even exist without a soul—don’t you know how dangerous soul magic is? You both could have been killed!” He tugged his hair a bit and rubbed his forehead, looking back at her like a second glance would make it all make sense. Hah, good luck buddy. Lup had been at this for decades and she was barely on top of it.

“There’s a lot to unpack there.” Taako said. Lup poked the noodles with her spoon. They could use a few more minutes but she was _hungry_. “How about I get the ‘living without a soul’ bit and you do the dark magic stuff?”

She shrugged. Sounded fair to her. She was, after all, the universe’s leading expert in soul magic. Probably.

“I don’t get why sharing a soul would be so bad, though? Don’t all twins do that?” Magnus asked. Bless his heart, he was so concerned. Barry frowned.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “I mean, yeah, in some very specific circumstances twins can be born with one soul, but messing with someone’s soul that already exists? Rewriting your very being? It drives you insane. You become a shell of who you once were, looking for the completion of your soul until you die. The lucky ones just go comatose.”

Yeah, if you’re a fuckin’ plebe you do.

“What about the unlucky ones?” Davenport asked.

“What?”

“The ones who don’t go comatose. What happens to them?” He prompted.

Barry fiddled with his glasses but didn’t take them off his face. He looked at her, at Taako, back to Davenport. He didn’t look at Magnus.

“They get violent. Having such an integral part of you warped…well, it’s part of what makes demons and some monsters, and it’s a near-endless well of magical power itself. The sheer amount of wild magic generated by a torn soul…nothing survives. They may tear through external structures for a while, sometimes long enough to get a mission accomplished or unfinished business settled, but eventually they just…burn up. Putting them down early is a mercy at that point.” Barry looked grim, but if he thought he was gonna put Lup and her brother down he had another think coming. “You have to understand, evidence that your soul has been altered is considered sufficient grounds for a death certificate. There may be something left, but it’s just not a person anymore.”

Taako looked at her and she could practically hear him say _destroy this fool_. She’d sat through a hundred necromancy lectures before giving up on the field that said exactly the same thing; she’d been waiting for this day forever. She handed off the spoon to him and he took over the stove.

“Your theory’s good for an amateur,” she started. “Decent analysis of a typical forced soul removal, some splits go that way too. You’re probably used to soulbond being a fancy word for slavery, too, right? Some schmuck gets stuck to someone he didn’t want to serve and has to follow their commands for eternity?”

“That is what a soulbond is, yes,” he gritted. Oh, he was getting irritated. Nasty boy. He’d never had to listen to discussion after academic discussion of old farts agreeing that his brother was impossible, though. That if he did exist he’d be an abomination. Lup had rage to spare and Barry was just scratching the surface of it.

“As if. Maybe you fucks have managed to twist it around and make soulbonds into the bogeyman, but you’ve also never seen the inside of a lab with that theory. What, one crazy douchebag does a bad thing and suddenly a whole branch of magic is evil? Soulbonds can be used for all kind of shit—how many innocent people have died because you decided souls were untouchable? How many terrified lovers and friends and parents and _siblings_ have had to hide what they are—have had to be _torn in half_ because—” There was a tug, jarring in her chest, that knocked the wind out of her, and she looked behind her and Taako was there, not even pretending to be unconcerned. She took a moment to drink in the sight of him—her other half, safe and present. Grounding.

“Soul stuff. It’s gonna get crazy for a while,” he said to the room at large before grabbing a fork from the air. A serving bowl floated lazily past, beginning to droop now that Lup had calmed for a moment. She took a moment to look around.

Taako’s weapon had disappeared, probably when she’d started getting passionate. Various cooking utensils were drifting to the floor, Taako picking them up as they went by him. A couple remained in orbit around her, too active to come down quite yet. Magnus had moved in front of Lucretia and Barry and Davenport both had their hands on their wands.

Merle was just watching her.

“Right. Fuck. Sorry,” she said. “Kinda proved your point there for a bit. Fuck.” She sat down and took a few deep breaths. Taako would take care of the floating kitchenware; she needed to calm down. She closed her eyes for a moment and straightened.

“Right, okay. Better now. Sorry, the bit after the split is the hardest part; it’ll be rough for a while while we get back to normal. We can talk logistics later, you’re gonna have to—stop looking at me like that,” she said. The anger had left her exhausted and she just wanted to curl up with Taako and some hot chocolate and a bad movie, but they had to get through this without anyone deciding they needed to die first. Barry was taking halting steps towards her.

Taako was instantly at her side, keyed up and thrumming with tension. Neither of them stopped Barry, though, and soon he was standing directly in front of them. She could lean forward and hug him.

His hand extended, not too quickly to stop, and he gave her the gentlest slap on the face.

“What?” That…well she’d expected that from maybe literally anyone else, and with more force, but…?

He was looking at her like she’d made the suns rise from the west. “You calmed down,” he said.

“What was I gonna do, attack you?” she asked. But, well. Maybe he’d thought that. And didn’t that bite.

“No, Lup, you don’t understand—you’re not supposed to be able to calm down. Ever. Once something sets you off, that’s supposed to be—how did you calm down?” He was looking at her, at the fork still hovering around the middle of the room, at Taako, at the others. She looked at Taako, who nodded.

“That’s what a healthy soulbond _does_ , Barold. You reign each other in. It’s not working right ‘cause it’s still healing—we’re not really supposed to be in separate realms of existence, big no-no—but that’s, uh—that’s us,” he said. Barry furrowed his brows.

“That’s—incredibly dangerous, still, that’s like, super illegal, but—I need to know more about this. Do you suffer adverse effects from centering Lup? Can you do it multiple times or do you need to rest? What if you aren’t there, can you still—I need more information, I need to look into this,” he muttered, and Lup knew that was one hurdle jumped.

“In the meantime, Barry—do we need to be concerned about this?” Davenport asked. It stung that he wasn’t even acknowledging them, but, yeah, fair. “If there’s something endangering my crew, I need to know.”

Taako’s hand tightened on her shoulder and she leaned into him for a moment, trying to project safety and comfort. No matter what, they were together again, whole.

“I don’t—I mean, if they’ve actually been soul-bonded this whole time—you said it happened when you were younger?” Barry asked. Taako nodded sharply and Lup straightened.

“Yeah. Must have been, I don’t know, forty, fifty? About half our lives now.” She stood to be level with her brother and then pushed him gently into the seat. His hands were shaking. She stayed close while she checked on the noodles again.

Floating in the water but not in the air, maybe a little overcooked, but manageable. She set them to drain.

“Then—I mean, Captain, I just—I don’t know. That shouldn’t even be possible, and once one of them gets set off it would be impossible to calm them down—Taako, can you do that too?” Barry was getting into it, fuck yeah. If nothing else, they had the spirit of scientific inquiry on their side.

“Calm down or get angry? ‘cause let me tell you, it’s a hard sell on the second one.” Lup answered, brushing by her brother as she went for the butter. Taako pouted, relaxing incrementally.

“I get angry. I was angry last year. You stole my favorite sweater.” To be fair, it was her favorite sweater too, and before that it had actually been Lucretia’s. Lup could hear her stifling a strangled giggle.

“Yeah, fuck yeah, never mind. Yeah, Taako can do all that. Again, usually less wild magic floating around, but, you know. Bad stuff. It happens.” Barry was looking desperate to get into his lab. What a nerd. Then again, she was revolutionizing his field, even if this wasn’t his particular area of interest.

Fuck yeah. That’s how we do.

“You do realize the implications of that, right? Lup, that’s—I mean, we have to verify, of course, and maybe your bond as twins is contributing but—Lup, that could turn everything we know about souls on its head. Hell, that could have effects on—on everything from liches, to, to summoning, to metamagic—I mean, that’s incredible!” He gestured with his hands as he spoke and she could feel Taako rolling his eyes at her. She had a thing for nerds, okay? It was cute.

Davenport clapped his hands loudly to get their attention. “Barry. Right now, at this moment, I need your honest opinion. Is this bond a danger to anyone on this ship?”

Barry paused for a moment, but shook his head. “I mean, I have to research more to be absolutely sure, but—if they’ve been bonded as long as they say they have and they haven’t lost control yet, I don’t think they’re going to now?”

Davenport nodded and turned to the twins. “And does it hurt the two of you?”

Taako looked at her and shrugged. She made a face back.

“Taking it out would be way worse,” he said. “I mean, if Lup dies I die and that sucks, but that would happen anyway. Worst thing having a soul’s ever done to me is get me in trouble with my…well.  We’ll get to that, I guess. Nah, it’s not hurting me.”

Technically not true—having to share a soul meant sharing some discomfort if they were too far apart or if one of them overworked themself. But being the only living experts on soulbonds, they could say it made the sky look green and no one would be able to prove them wrong. Lup made a sound of agreement, sliding a massive plate of buttery lasagna noodles in front of her brother and another one for her.

“Gods I love food,” he muttered.

“Anyway. I offered Taako my soul, he accepted. We share now. We started out with a sort of seventy percent/thirty percent split, but it grew to fill in the gaps—Barry, you might wanna wait until later to write this down, we’ve still got a long way to go. Anyway, now we have a big fucking super soul and we kick ass.”

“Most of the time,” Taako said through a mouthful of noodles.

“Most of the time?” She echoed. They kicked ass _all_ of the time.

He put down his fork and got up. “Well, not right now.” He rummaged through the cabinet for a glass, turned to raise an eyebrow at her. She nodded and he got another.

“I mean, while I was—where I was—some shit happened. Not a great time, if you know what I mean. Our soul got, uh, pretty torn open on my end. You notice all the bits I’ve been hacking up? It’s gonna be a while for that to heal, and until then, well. Mood swings, magic surges, it’s puberty all over again. Good times.” He didn’t flinch when he said it, but he busied himself pouring two glasses of water with his back to all of them. She didn’t allow herself to feel the rage that wanted to escape at the thought. She tried to keep her brother’s cavalier mood.

“Fuck. Well, usually we kick ass with our magic super soul, sometimes we leak all over the place and make our kitchenware float. Wait, was that it? I thought I was just super pissed,” she said. Taako made a gesture with his head, turning back around with their waters in hand.

“Probably; shit doesn’t normally float when you yell at people. It’ll be just like our first few years after the bond.” Their first few years after the bond hadn’t been great, but they’d also been children new to being homeless and terrified of being recognized for what they were and killed, so hopefully this time would be better. Lup nodded.

“Can I just—”

“No.” Taako stopped Barry before he got started.

Nevertheless, he persisted. “ _Can I_ _just express,_ again, how insane that is? Literally impossible. The fact that you survived that as children—that you didn’t kill each other, yourselves, anyone else—you do realize you’re completely reinventing arcane theory on souls, right?”

Taako smirked and Lup grinned at him through a mouthful of buttery noodley deliciousness.

“Oh, natch.” He said. “Buckle up, homeboy, it only gets worse from here. Before Lup pulled some crazy shit I didn’t have a soul.”

“Wait wait wait, quick question,” Magnus said. Lup was a bit surprised he hadn’t had more of those; magic wasn’t really something he studied.

“Yeah, you in the red,” Taako said. Hah. Because they were all wearing red.

 Magnus replied with all the aplomb of a reporter in a press conference. “Thank you. So just to get this straight—you have a soul, it’s fine, nothing has changed?”

Lup shrugged.

“Sounds about right,” Taako said.

“You’re literally exactly the same as you were before.” Magnus continued.

“I mean, are we ever exactly the same as we’ve been before? As we journey through the incredible road of life, though we may walk again the same passages—”

“Yes.” Lup didn’t let her brother finish—he’d go on all night if she did.

“We just spent a half hour arguing and Lup made the kitchen float to establish that nothing has changed.”

Well.

If you put it that way.

Lup giggled.

“Closer to an hour,” Lucretia added. “Actually, if we want to count before Lup woke up, almost an hour and a half.”

Davenport had a reluctant smile creeping on to his face. “If you want to be technical the kitchen is already floating. The whole ship is floating.”

Merle nudged him with an elbow. “Hey, if you float a bunch of shit but you’re in space, does it make a sound?”

“That’s not even a _joke_ , old man,” Taako chortled. “that doesn’t fuckin’—what even is that?”

Magnus lost the fight and snorted loudly, and his face was so red from suppressing it that Lup had to laugh. Taako didn’t last long after her, and Lucretia had tears in her eyes.

“Hey, if I wear Davenport’s uniform but I’m upside down, does it make a sound? That’s what you sound like,” Taako gasped. Magnus latched on right away.

“If I steal the Starblaster but I do it in the dark, is it really stealing?”

“I don’t know, if I write fanfiction for fantasy Twilight but I keep it in my official journals, am I still a dork?” Lup asked, and Lucretia hugged her notebook mock-defensively.

“Well if I do secret illegal soul magic to my brother but I don’t tell anyone for fifty years is it still a crime?” She shot back.

“How about—how about if I fight the power bear and get my shit wrecked but everything resets, did I still lose?”

“Hey, fuck you, I woulda got him eventually! What if I get my god to support my creepy plant fetish, is it still gross?”

“Magnus, if you need help understanding the love between a man and his plants there’s a book that I can—”

“No! No! Gods, no, I’m in hell,” Magnus wheezed, and for a little while, the seven of them shared a laugh.

Lup had a feeling they’d need a little light for the conversation ahead, anyway. It was time for Taako to tell them what he was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See? Isn't that a nice splitting point? A little bit of laughter, Lup and Barry still need to talk to each other but they're on the same side again, Merle being a dirty old man...what more could you need?
> 
> (answers. you need answers and i have not provided them. i am sorry, they are coming)
> 
> As always, please let me know what you think!
> 
> Also, update on things I might write after this: I kind of want to do a series of oneshots based off people's guesses for what Taako is in this fic. How would y'all feel about that?


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here it fuckin is, last chapter time, the day of prophecy has arrived

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It had to happen eventually.

“Okay, okay,” Taako said once they’d calmed down some. “We gotta finish this up, I wanna sleep for a year.”

It went quiet as everyone settled again and Davenport nodded.

“Go on,” he said.

He really wanted to get this over with before he could realize what was happening and freak out. He’d never told anyone but Lup before. She smiled bracingly at him and he went for a friendly grimace back before looking directly at Magnus’s hands. They were friendly hands.

“So you’ve probably figured out I’m not a normal elf,” he said quietly. “I mean, for all intents and purposes, I’m supposed to seem like one, but that wasn’t always what I was.”

Lup’s hand found his arm and he desperately wished for his weapon back. And then, because he wanted it, it was there; clutched between his fidgeting fingers. He thought he saw Barry, closest besides Lup, startle out of the corner of his eyes. Of course. Someone just suddenly having a bigass weapon was startling. He’d been swinging it around not too long ago; there was no reason for them to trust him with it.

Still, no one took it from him. He held it closer that was strictly logical and rubbed his thumb down it.

“When I was made I was one of a million. Billions, maybe. We were a dime a dozen, cheap to make but time-intensive, mostly made in pretty huge batches for—well, for…well. For—whatever. Gardening, cooking, cleaning, things work different there but we were the equivalent of…maids, pretty much. Servants. Magical constructs that get your chores done, sturdy enough to last a lifetime.” He laughed. Glanced up. “I know, hard to imagine, right? Taako taking out someone else’s trash? But that’s—that’s what I was, that was me. And all of my—the others, like me. It was what we were made for.”

Lup stroked his forearm and he gripped his weapon. He leaned it against his shoulder, almost hugging it close. He hadn’t ever thought it would feel like this.

“I—I don’t know much; about what it was like. I didn’t need a very good memory so I didn’t have one. I’d complete my task and I’d find another one. Cleaning, maintenance, preparation. I think I was something like a lab assistant for a while, for maybe a botanist? We didn’t really need to be—unique. As far as they were concerned—as far as anyone was concerned we were interchangeable. If one of us broke you’d need to train in a new one, but we were, we didn’t have faces. We didn’t have names.” He looked back at Magnus’s hands but they were clenching and unclenching and he looked down. He remembered himself and looked up, stared them each in the eye without seeing them and refused to yield.

“I was assigned somewhere new. A—man, I guess, a whole group of people but mostly the one, he was an artist. He would—with the Light of Creation, he would make universes. Worlds of worlds of worlds, and he’d watch them develop. I’d take care of them.” He’d taken care of trillions upon trillions of lives, hundreds of universes, had accidentally dropped one on the floor and extinguished more lives than he would ever be able to understand. Why was the opinion of five tiny souls so important? But Lup squeezed his arm as he paused and he knew why. He couldn’t make his eyes focus. He ran his hands slowly up and down his weapon and it wasn’t subtle, he was better than this. Somehow he couldn’t bring himself to be better than this.

“It was—well I guess it doesn’t matter. I worked in a museum of creations, mostly the—I watched when I could. Entire universes that fit into the palm of your hand.” He hadn’t been allowed to touch them after he’d dropped the one for a very long time; he’s pretty sure the only reason he was ever allowed to again was because they’d assumed he’d been replaced at some point.

“I wasn’t the only one there, but there weren’t many of us and except for two of them, the others would be in and out. I didn’t need to know why so I didn’t.” Lup had named the other two he’d worked with consistently Jack and Elliot, although she’d never met them. She never would, now. He had to remember to tell her that later. Maybe Jack was still—in operation. Somewhere else. Maybe.

“It sounds beautiful,” Magnus whispered, and Taako realized he’d just been staring. He clutched his weapon and squared his shoulders.

“Fuck yeah it was, fuckin—beautiful-est museum you’ve ever laid eyes on by yours truly. Sight to fuckin’ see.” No one argued. “Anyway, sometimes something would happen. A world would turn out ugly, it got boring, whatever. So what do you do? Gotta spice things up a bit, get some artist intervention. Send one of us in there with a quick mission, couple decades, centuries in there and it’d be all spruced up again. Maintenance. Was just like any other job but—more. More people. More exploring. New things all the time and then you’d get pulled and it’s back to dusting the halls. Get a job, go in, repeat.”

They were getting it. He wanted to stand up but he remembered Barry jumping when he’d gotten his weapon out and he stayed where he was. He worried his sleeves with his fingertips, stopped doing that, moved back to his weapon. Traced it up and down.

“Sometimes it would be—not good things. No, I don’t mean that. It was fine. It was good. It was a job; it was a good—job.” He looked at Lup. She was with him. Well, she hadn’t been with him then, but she also hadn’t existed then, so it evened out. She was with him now. She was letting him talk. She let him do so many things. He looked back at the floor.

“So I get an assignment, right? I can’t remember shit but I know this is what I do, time is weird there, it works out. There’s actually like—you know how we have dimensions, you know, one two three four, space and time?” He didn’t wait for a response. “They have dimensions too but they’re different. Like they start at five six seven eight, they might have the same number but it’s different kinds, like—”

Way to be irrelevant, Taako. No one fuckin’ cares about the damn dimensional qualities of the outer universe.

“Anyway. I get this job and it’s weird but not too weird, you know? Like for all I know this is just like any other job ‘cause I have no damn clue what I did yesterday, because yesterday wasn’t backwards it was sideways and orange and I don’t remember time like you can’t taste color.” He shrugged. Magnus’s hands had stopped clenching up but they were fidgeting. Lucretia handed him a piece of paper from her notebook and he started tearing it into little pieces. He was gonna get those all over, they were gonna be finding them for years. Good old Magnus.

“So something’s wrong with this universe, it needs pruning, one of the artists dropped their tools into it and there was a rot there. Go in, grab the Light, prune out the bad bits, another job done, right? But we’d—I mean I think we’d never had something from our world accidentally get into a project before. Or—maybe this is just what every assignment was like, maybe this is just what I do. My bosses look at it and find this kid, right, who.” He makes a helpless gesture with one hand, aborted halfway through when he hits his weapon. It was supposed to be a ‘you know’ gesture, but no, they really couldn’t know. Thus why he was telling them.

“They find this little elf kid who gets killed when she’s sixty, seventy? Nah, sixty. Caravan, bandits, ambush, real tragedy. No survivors.” Lup tightens her grip momentarily, remembering that night. He grips her back before returning to holding his weapon. He spins it around in his hands a little, just lengthwise, barely moving it at all.

“This is, she’s, like—she could be something, you know? Like she could be something big, her fate could be—really big. There are a few people like that but they all live unimportant lives and then die when the rot gets to them, or after that but they don’t change anything, but this one—she dies before that. Quick, preventable, easy interference.” Magnus has started tearing the paper in a spiral now and the peeling sound is loud in the quiet room. If Taako had ever wanted an audience, he had one now. It was hard to enjoy it under the circumstances. He wished they were watching him for any other reason.

“So you—” Barry starts when he stops for a moment. Merle puts a hand on his arm and they exchange a glance that Taako doesn’t watch from his periphery. Lup looks at him questioningly. _Need me to take over?_ says her face. Taako shakes his head. _I need to do this._

He needs to be honest with them now. He’s so sick of pretending to be what he’s not, what he never will be no matter how hard he and Lup try. He needs them to know the truth and stop acting like he’s a _person_ all the damn time. He needs it to stop being so damn _hard_.

She accepts it and scoots even closer. She’s more on his chair now than hers but the pressure and warmth at his side feels good, feels real. He has edges and they can touch her and be solid. He feels floaty and strange but she’s there and he’s right there.

“So I get, get—ready. To. I.” He can’t do this. He can’t do this part. “I…they. I.”

He feels like he’s just going to dissolve right there, like his mind and his soul are so tired and gone they’re just going to fly off. He has to get through this, though. He can get through one conversation.

“Then I get born and I’m a baby for a while and it sucks but I follow Lup around and she gives me her soul and we go to space and here we are.” That’s not gonna cut it. “No, wait. I can do better. Okay. Okay, so I—I stop—no that’s what happened that’s it.”

He’s clinging to his weapon so hard it hurts. He wonders if you can give yourself bruises by holding on to something too tight. He wonders if you can break your bones. Hands are so small, so thin, it wouldn’t take much, would it? A few pounds of pressure and you’re right next to useless. Magnus’s hands make ridiculous origami and also kill people sometimes. Lup’s hands make magic. His hands make…what?

“Yeah, he made it so I didn’t die when I was a kid. I think the plan was for him to die instead, right?” He nods as his sister takes over and loves her with a fierceness that hurts. He’d never known love could hurt before Lup. He hadn’t known much at all.

“Yeah, that was a bullshit plan though so we both lived. Our aunt died,” she paused for a second like she always did when their aunt came up and Taako felt the guilt and regret eating him alive. Should’ve saved her. Monster child.

“He told me about what he was around for then, ‘fore that I had an idea but I didn’t guess the scope of it. To be fair, extradimensional creators of our universe isn’t the first theory most folks go to.” Lup got a couple sounds of amusement from the crew, not quite laughter but Magnus muttered “You go that right.”

“Anyway, we’re already fuckin’ revolutionizing arcane theory by existing post-soulbond, we figure we should study up on this shit. We school up, get our education, do research. Turns out there’s a bunch of bullshit rules around Taako so he can’t, you know, lead a bloody revolution against his oppressors.” Taako snorts out a laugh. “I name his boss ‘cause he can’t tell me the guy’s name himself—it’s Jeffandrew—and we work out what’s important and what’s not, start blocking out his worse rules.”

“Jeffandrew doesn’t make the rules, he’s just in charge of me specifically,” Taako reminded her, but Lup liked to hate everyone from the outer universe indiscriminately so she ignored him.

“Like I said, Jeffandrew is the jackass that personally victimized my brother, so we get deep into that good soul shit and start ripping him out. Problem is, no one’s bothered to research setting someone free from existence-binding rules, so it’s be like—like trying to make me a dwarf. We have to figure out what’s Taako and what’s what Taako’s supposed to be for work. Takes forever, lots of power involved, we get some good progress but we haven’t figured everything out yet. We’d got as far as letting up on the bits that make him do what I say ‘cause that’s the most immediate pressure, though we hadn’t got it all the way, when the Light of Creation falls.” Taako was pretty sure the world’s best and brightest can put it together from there and then tell Magnus and Merle what’s what, but they’ve got this far. Might as well finish it.

He smoothed out his jacket. “I see the tools I’m supposed to retrieve fall from the damn sky. It’s all over the news. But I’ve been pretty much wiped clean for this mission—I don’t know what it is, what it can do, why it’s important. I just know it’s really, really important and I need to get it and Lup is also really, really important and I’m supposed to help her do whatever she ends up doing that’s gonna save this universe. So I figure, hey, Lup’s probably gonna do her thing and it’s gonna involve the Light, right? My bosses wouldn’t send me to her for nothing.”

Well, he had doubted it when he’d had the ability to doubt it, but now he felt a deep confidence that his bosses knew what they were doing and certainly couldn’t have made a mistake and if he just did what they told him everything would turn out fine. He stopped thinking about it before he could get stuck.

“What? Sorry, forgot where I was. Anyway, we were—we go to space and the whole thing with the Hunger happens, which, sorry. About your whole…yeah, you know. And then Lup dies.” He had to stop for a second to let that hit him. It hurts, like it always does, a dual sting of failure and grief, only more real this time because he’s not imagining it, it happened and he was there and he didn’t do anything. He was making fucking pancakes and his sister was murdered.

She nudges him and he manages a smile. She’s right there, whole and exhausted but unharmed. Right there. Safe.

“Yeah, so, uh. Sorry about freaking out when that happened, it’s been a while and just—didn’t expect it. I felt—I mean I wouldn’t be very good at keeping Lup alive if I didn’t know when she was in mortal danger, so I felt that she was gonna die, and then I felt my whole soul snap back to me and it was a _fucking lot_ , and it _fucking hurt_ , by the way, never do that again, and I—I felt my job here get finished.” The feeling of a task ending wasn’t supposed to be good or bad, just to exist, to let him know he was needed elsewhere in case he couldn’t figure it out himself, a last-minute reroute in case something about his instructions were unclear and his sentience wasn’t enough to let him know he was done. It wasn’t even supposed to be useful; he was given free thought in the first place to be better at his job, he was supposed to know when he was done. But he knows that without it he would have never left and he wonders if maybe that isn’t why it really exists.

He’s not the first of his kind to get…quirky, after a long mission.

“I knew Lup was gonna come back at the end of the year, so I needed to get our soul out of me. I tried to cast a spell to help but it must’ve fizzled, or I got pulled before I could finish, or something. I got called back out.” He remembers the terror, the disorientation, all the thing he’s not supposed to feel when he comes back home. The deep, aching regret. He’d wanted more time.

“They uh. I mean what do you do if you summon a construct to do your dirty work and it stops working? You fix it or you trash it. They tried to fix me but Lup and I weren’t fucking around when we made our mods, they couldn’t touch half of ‘em.” He smirked despite the fear, the pain. Lup grabbed his hands.

“Really? That’s great!” She exclaimed, and he let the smirk swap out for a grin in return.

“Right? They haven’t got shit on—” Apparently he’d gone too far and they both buckled as his essence ripped into their soul. Fuck. He could taste it on the back of his throat and took a swig of water to avoid coughing.

Barry’s hand came into view on Lup’s shoulder and Taako was a little surprised when his first instinct wasn’t to go for a weapon. Hah, Lup was already making him soft again. Magnus helped him back to sitting and fluttered his hands over him like he couldn’t figure out where to put them. No injuries to stop, so the poor guy was a little out of his depth. Taako grabbed his sister’s hand and turned their soul up to eleven, burning back his being for a moment. It hurt like hell but he was free to talk for a while.

“I’m good, I’m good. Broke the rules, not really—not really supposed to have, you know, doubts about my bosses and their incredible power and wisdom. Definitely don’t think my sister is more powerful than they ever were. That would be super fuckin’ illegal.” He did cough up a little more of his essence as he tore at it, sending glittery puffs through the air. He really needed to learn how to make smoke rings; there were so many cool tricks he could do.

“Okay, buddy, that’s cool, take your time,” Magnus said, settling for patting his hair a little awkwardly and manfully rubbing his shoulder. What a jock.

Lup was giving him the ‘stop hurting yourself’ look, but she hadn’t said anything about it so he could hurt himself as much as he wanted. So there.

“Anyway, uh. They figured they couldn’t take out Lup’s mods and they decided to remove my soul. They tried, um, a lot of things. Some, some maybe not fun things. I couldn’t really—tell what was real for a while, except if it wanted my soul it was probably bad. But. They couldn’t take it so they put in a fuckton of new shit, stuff that would react if I did soul stuff. Too many feelings, wrong kind of feelings, that kind of stuff—I had it before but they’d never really thought we could have feelings, right? So they didn’t bother working too hard on it.

“Like, if you summoned a mage hand, you wouldn’t bother insuring against it, I dunno, meeting another mage hand and falling in love, right? Because that doesn’t happen. But when your mage hand gets a soul all of a sudden you have to worry. So they tried to put in a sort of—negative reinforcement thing. My, you know, self would be anti-soul and my soul would, obviously, be pro-soul and they’d duke it out and my general existence would win.” Lup squeezes him and he realized they’re holding hands. Huh. His weapon has fallen to the floor but he’s not panicking. Magnus gets it for him anyway and he smiles at the big guy.

“Thanks. Anyway, I uh, they didn’t plan for the soul being Lup’s too, I guess. They didn’t bother to remove the compulsion to protect Lup before all that, so it ended up just—tearing me apart. It seemed fine for a bit so they sent me to—training. Make sure I was in shape for, you know, work. ‘s why I have this, you know. Bigass trident. It’s actually part of me? It’s just, it’s here when I need it and it goes away when I don’t want it. Anyway I think they had another guarding job for me or something, or they wanted to see if I’d gotten rusty, or something. Which, fine. I kicked ass. I—I kicked ass.” He remembers Elliot.

“I did what they wanted me to and I didn’t, always, like it? So, you know, the new bits try to take out my soul, I fuck them up, they fuck me up, combat training fucks me up ‘cause it’s fucking _hard_ to fight when your soul’s getting, you know, _shredded_ , but I was fucking amazing and kept them from getting rid of me until a bit before the cycle started. Must’ve screwed up the math somewhere because I thought I still had a while before it reset when I got back to you fucks, but again, badass feats of combat and magical prowess, I can afford to drop some numbers someplace. Then I woke up on the Starblaster, start of the year.” And just in time, too—last thing he remembered they’d just given up on fixing him and had been about to enact another plan. His soul rattles but doesn’t act out at the thought.

The crew was looking at him still. He tossed his hair. “So, you know, Taako did a bomb-ass job, saved his own ass, again, applause, please.”

Magnus claps halfheartedly, like, twice. Sad. Lup grins at him, though, so at least she gets it.

“Didn’t expect anything less, bro,” she says, and fistbumps him. Fuck yeah.

“There are still a lot of questions that need answering,” Davenport said. Poor guy was rubbing his temples like they were about to send him into an early grave. “Not least of which being how this is going to affect our mission in the future. But it’s been a long day for all of us, and we need to rest up. I just have two questions for you—three, actually.”

Taako nodded. “Shoot.”

“First, is Taako your real name?” Davenport asked.

Hmm. Well, that hadn’t really been what he’d expected. Not super easy to answer, either.

“I mean…I guess? Out there,” he makes a vague gesture to mean the outer universe, “we—I mean, things like me—we don’t have names. We’re not really supposed to have, you know, individual identities? Sometimes we call each other by the same few words or something, but not really names? Or someone calls all of us a name but it’s the same name. You can’t really tell us apart. Hell, we can’t tell ourselves apart sometimes. So names never really came into it? But I’ve, uh, I’ve gone by Taako for the last hundred years. I’ve gotten pretty attached.”

Davenport doesn’t really look any less stressed. Ah well, he’d asked.

“Right. Second, Taako.” Oh no, the Captain face was coming out. “You were hired into the IPRE under false pretenses. You have a job that presents a potential conflict of interest to our mission.”

Well fuck. “You know the IPRE is literally seven people now, right? Like, I’m pretty sure you can’t fire me. Actually, if you’re firing me, I want my paycheck for the last eleven years.”

Lup stood up. “We fuckin’ regenerate with you every year, what the hell, Davenport.”

Davenport sighed. “Sit down, you two. I’m not kicking you out. Are you gonna let me finish?”

Lup glared but slumped back into her chair. She couldn’t cross her arms without letting go of Taako so she crossed her legs. Taako sat ramrod straight like he’d been trained to.

“Taako, in order to recognize your unique position and the information you’ve given us, I’d like to ask you to alter a part of your mission. As it stands, you’re responsible for guarding Lup, correct?” The Captain continued.

“I mean, more or less, yeah.” It was more complicated than that but if you had to put it simply, sure.

“I’d like you to consider making your mission a joint effort with ours. You represent a people we’ve had no contact with in the past, but we both seem to want the same thing—the Light back where it can’t be consumed by the Hunger, and eventually the end of the Hunger altogether. I know you probably can’t change your orders, but are you willing to work with us?” Davenport was doing his recruitment voice from when he’d first approached them. Taako wondered if he realized. It was kind of sweet that the guy was going to all this effort to ask him to do what he’d already been doing for a decade.

Well, Taako could reward the dramatics. He drew himself up to his full wizarding height and said, “Captain Davenport.”

He summoned up his energy to make his eyes glow a little and anchored himself more firmly in this reality. He let go of Lup’s hand and twirled his weapon like a staff before slamming the butt of it into the ground.

“I have seen your crew and I have seen your mission. Your cause is an honorable one and your dedication is admirable. I would join you in your attempt to retrieve the tool you call the Light of Creation and end the abomination that is the Hunger.” Even Lucretia looked a bit impressed. Booyah.

“I will also make delicious macarons on alternating Thursdays. Thank you for your time.” He bent over and stuck his hand out for a handshake and Davenport gave him a wry smile, all gravity lost.

“I think I can handle that.” They shook hands.

“Fuck yeah. You had one more question? Or was that three?” Honestly, Taako had been distracted putting on a show and lost count. He glanced at Lup but she was busy giggling at Barry’s exasperated expression. What a fuckin’ romantic, his sister.

Davenport pulled himself together for one last question. “I did. The face that you’re here…does that mean we’re going to beat the Hunger?”

The room fell silent. Even Lup hadn’t asked him for a guarantee, although of course he’d given his professional opinion (‘we’re gonna kick its ass’). Taako shrugged.

“Honestly? I have no idea. I was sent because Lup has the potential to do something incredible, and given the circumstances it’s pretty tempting to say that’s beating the Hunger. But it’s just as likely she’ll be a hero or martyr, make a pretty story for them to watch and put in their museum. Not to mention the free will aspect—I was put here to alter the outcome, but now we don’t know what it’ll be. We know there’s at least one happy ending available to us, but if we’re dumb about it we aren’t guaranteed a win,” he said. “I do know that I’ve never met anyone whose ass Lup and I can’t kick, and we supposedly have five of the most important non-Lup lives in the damn universe on this ship—honestly, I could’ve been assigned to any of you.

“You tell anyone I said this and I’ll deny it, but in the end…there’s no possible group I’d have more faith in than this one. I can’t swear we’re gonna win based on my job, but me? Taako, the person, the individual with a heart and a mind of his own? I can swear to you on that. I promise you, Davenport, we will win.” He felt his soul fluctuate as the oath settled in him. Words had a power of their own, and he may not be a bard but he could make a wizard’s oath good as anyone. Davenport’s eyes widened as he felt the wild magic encircle them, but he nodded, accepting it.

“Your faith won’t be misplaced,” the Captain promised, and Taako felt the oath cement itself. The bond engine whirred as one more powerful connection fueled it, on top of the decade of life and love already within. He grinned and his soul pushed up in him, warm and full of life.

And then Lup hit him, mussing up his hair and getting him in a headlock.

“Aww, my sweet little baby brother, making his big declarations! I almost took you seriously for a second there!” She bundled him into a hug and he squeezed her back, not even bothering to fix his hair. And then they were both off the ground as Magnus reached the limit of time he was capable of going through without a hug, and Taako had to dispel his weapon back into his essence or risk stabbing him.

“Hey, don’t leave the little guys out!” Merle called from the floor, and Barry awkwardly sidled up like a goof to Magnus’s side where Taako could yank him in.

“Lucretia, you can’t miss team bonding time, it’s mandatory,” Davenport called, and Lucretia stopped fiddling with her notebooks and rushed in to the hug. Fuckin’ dork, still shy after eleven damn years.

Taako was surrounded by his favorite people, and they all still thought he was a person, and they still loved him, and his sister was safe.

For the first time in a long time, he relaxed.

And then he transmuted everyone’s pockets into pudding. Fuckin’ magic surges.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to thank everyone for reading my fic, it's been a wild ride and y'all have been so fantastically supportive of it. I have loved writing this, so much. My life hasn't been great recently and writing for this has really given me something to look forward to. Thank you so much for your kind comments and your fantastic support.
> 
> This fic won't be my last foray into TAZ; normally I ghost and leave a fandom but I have so many ideas for this and other universes that I think I'll be here for a while. I hope you like what I do next! I'll probably take a short break from this 'verse to work on my other TAZ fic for a bit, but I do have a sequel floating around in my head--there are still some things that need to be resolved.
> 
> Thanks again and I'll see you in my next fic!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [You are What You Eat, After All](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12617784) by [SandrC](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SandrC/pseuds/SandrC)
  * [Jeffandrew Fucks Up (And Subsequently Gets Wrecked)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12624639) by [verdantElf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/verdantElf/pseuds/verdantElf)




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